Upon arriving Thursday at Parrott Hall on the campus of Olivet Nazarene University for the first day of training camp, cornerback Nathan Vasher wondered how his outlook might change.
“Hopefully I won’t be on the third or fourth floor of the dorm and I’ll be on the first or second,” Vasher said, smiling. “That comes with being a little older.”
A year later, every Bears player bunking alongside Vasher for the next three weeks needs to get used to a new view too — and it has nothing to do with room assignments.
When the Bears look at the rest of the NFC now, it is from the top of the conference mountain. No Bears team has started a season from that perspective in 21 years and as those 1986 Bears showed, among others, staying there often can be harder than the climb up.
The rarefied air from that vantage point can dizzy teams, as the combined 33-47 record of the last five Super Bowl runner-ups the season after their appearances suggests.
A swagger can become a stagger without the proper guidance.
That is where coach Lovie Smith comes in, of course.
With so much talent and experience returning from a team that ran roughshod through the NFC a year ago, the pressure shifts to Smith.
Forget about waiting to see if Cedric Benson can cut it or if Rex Grossman will get it in his second full season as a starter. Put any other questions about a roster that really doesn’t have many on hold. Training camp reveals coaching and leadership more than any other segment of the NFL calendar.
The Bears gave Smith a hefty raise when they invested $23.45 million into a four-year contract extension and Thursday night he started earning it.
Smith handed out NFC championship rings in a private team ceremony that he had to ensure contained equal parts celebration and motivation.
Sure, (mostly) everybody in the organization will be proud to wear the jewelry. But Smith needs his players to think of the disappointment in Miami when they look at it more than the euphoria in Chicago after beating the New Orleans Saints for the NFC title.
Putting on the ring almost has to hurt, and not because it’s too tight.
The rings have to serve the same purpose as the T-shirts center Olin Kreutz printed up for teammates in the off-season, the ones that had the word “Unfinished” and the date of the 2008 Super Bowl on the back.
“A reminder that we have one more step to take,” quarterback Rex Grossman said of the ring.
That can be easy to forget for players who get too caught up in the trappings of being a winner in a city madly in love with its football team.
Somehow, Smith has to prevent that from happening. Somehow, he has to put the Bears in the same mind-set they were a year ago when training camp began and they still were scarred by the Steve Smith Experience in the 2006 NFC playoff loss to the Carolina Panthers.
Somehow, Lovie Smith has to make Vasher and Charles Tillman, cornerbacks who just signed fat contracts, exert themselves like guys competing for the 53rd roster spot.
Human nature says the Bears will lack the edge they took onto the field in 2006 because many of them are wealthier, more accomplished and less driven. Not that Smith wants to hear any of those theories.
“I don’t buy that at all,” he said. “I think success can breed success, period. We’ve heard about the losing Super Bowl team and what they’re supposed to do and we don’t buy into that. What we’re buying into is we think we have our best team coming, this year.”
No argument here. Even after losing Thomas Jones to the Jets in a trade, the Bears improved offensively with the draft of tight end Greg Olsen and conversion of Devin Hester to wide receiver. Defensively, the only drama revolves around the candidates at tackle to replace Tank Johnson, but the Bears won’t lose a single game because of poor play from their nose tackle position.
Pressure?
“I don’t feel no pressure,” said Benson, one of the few players on the spot this camp as he replaces Jones as the feature back.
“I have to do something and I know I will do something. If there is pressure there, I’ll have some fun with it.”
They can have all the fun they want as long as they don’t lose focus. And barring injury, they shouldn’t. Lance Briggs avoided a holdout. Every draft pick signed. Johnson is history.
Oddly, after six months in which the off was missing in off-season, the Bears reconvened to this rural, quiet campus town with nothing else on the agenda other than a Feb. 3, 2008, appointment in Glendale, Ariz. It’s a date they have every reason to keep.
There are no compelling football reasons not to favor the Bears to win the NFC. There are no excuses, no distractions, no off-the-field explanations why the Bears shouldn’t continue to dominate this season against a schedule statistically ranked the second-easiest in the league.
After Smith ended a succinct 10-minute news conference to open the season unofficially in front of relatively light media contingent, somebody told him that he should imagine how short the questions would be if the Bears ever won a Super Bowl.
“That’s the way camp is supposed to start, where you’re talking about football,” Smith said. “Seems like every year I’ve had something not related to guys on the football field.
“This is new and I like it a lot. … I don’t know what you guys are going to have to write about now.”
If Smith is doing his job the way NFL head coaches in his tax bracket do, it will be a month full of writer’s block.
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dhaugh@tribune.com
