Cedric Benson’s eyes grew wide. The subtle tone of his voice suddenly boomed as he envisioned making a quick cut to the outside and accelerating past the competition.
The Bears running back was referring to his passion for racing BMWs, not his love for playing football.
“My junior year of college, I started getting into this need-for-speed-type thing,” Benson said. “Then it developed into, ‘OK, I want to be good at this.'”
He’s serious too. Benson plans to take racing-certification classes in South Carolina during the off-season with the track-ready red BMW M3 he has at home in Texas. Benson participated in a non-competitive racing event last spring in his home state.
“The fastest I’ve ever gone? About 170 m.p.h.,” Benson said. “But on the track, there’s no limit.”
Now if Benson could just keep the Bears’ running game on the fast track.
Benson, the fourth overall pick of the 2005 NFL draft, comes into Sunday night’s game against the Dallas Cowboys fresh off the second 100-yard game of his career. Despite improved production against the Chiefs, Benson still is hearing it from critics. And he will until he performs at a high level on a consistent basis.
Benson insists he ignores negative publicity. John Parchman, his high school coach and mentor, begs to differ.
“It bothers Cedric when people are critical of him. It crushes him,” Parchman said. “He thinks a lot. He probably thinks more than he should about things like that.
“The man gets disappointed easily. He’s misunderstood sometimes. He’s very sincere, very conscious of the job he does. And because he’s quiet, that comes across sometimes as being kind of aloof.”
The Bears must have faith in him, though, because they parted ways with Thomas Jones in favor of the younger Benson. He might not be the vocal leader or the blocker Jones was, but Benson has potential the Bears clearly found irresistible.
Benson would be the first to say he has yet to fulfill his promise. He says he hasn’t played his style since his final home game in college, when he led Texas to a 26-13 victory over rival Texas A&M with 165 yards on 33 carries. Back then, the offense revolved around him.
“We do a lot of rotating here, a lot of situational stuff,” Benson said. “You don’t really feel like you are just that guy, that player in the offense. Do I want that feeling back? Yeah. But you have to show that with your production on the field. I’m confident things will take care of itself.”
During training camp, Benson often would sit alone in the dining room with sunglasses covering his eyes. An outsider might view him as an arrogant player distancing himself from his teammates. Benson says that wasn’t the case.
“I understand that people don’t know me, don’t know me personally,” he said. “Some things that you think about a person, that you perceive about a person, you made up or come up with yourself.”
Benson put himself on shaky ground during an acrimonious holdout before his rookie season. His rift with the well-respected Jones over the previous two seasons wasn’t an ideal scenario either.
Benson doesn’t want to be judged on the past.
“Who is Cedric Benson? I’m nobody in particular,” he said. “I’m just a Southern boy who’s old school. I like to be at home with my two Rottweilers. I like things to be real simple.”
Starting a racing career doesn’t fit in the “simple” category, but Benson is intent on doing so. Parchman laughed when told about Benson’s aspirations, then told a story of Benson crashing on a moped during his high school days.
“I made him work out all skinned up and bleeding,” Parchman said. “He thought I was the meanest man in the world. Then he went to college and he got this sports bike. I told him to park it in my garage and I wouldn’t let him ride it.”
Benson has put limits on himself in his latest venture.
“Not until the off-season,” he said. “But I’m going to do it. You have to live a little, right?”
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vxmcclure@tribune.com
