“If you don’t have a good locker room, you won’t have a good football team. No team gets into the playoffs without good chemistry.” — Bears general manager Jerry Angelo before Super Bowl XLI.
In an explanation about what the Bears need to do to correct the problems that have made the defense historically bad, Brian Urlacher tried making the point that each individual player simply needed to fulfill his job.
“We have to do our 1/11th and we’ll be fine,” Urlacher said.
Sounds elementary: Eleven times 1/11.
It goes without saying that for the Bears’ defense to regain its dominant look, Urlacher and Tommie Harris and Lance Briggs — the stars of the unit — probably need to contribute more than the 9 percent per play for which Urlacher holds each starter accountable.
But the broader point Urlacher had no intention of making helps explain another big reason for the Bears’ 2-4 start, one of the NFL’s most disappointing.
This year for the Bears is like a big math problem that just isn’t adding up.
Two plus two keeps equaling five — in the locker room, on the sidelines, on the field every Sunday. A winning equation this isn’t. The reasons would be hard to define no matter how long you study it.
It is nothing like the great science experiment of 2006 that produced the team chemistry every Super Bowl contender needs. This year, that chemistry evaporated quickly under the hot flames generated by the pressure of repeating as NFC champions.
The relationships among Bears players and coaches haven’t necessarily changed, but the personal goals and agendas might have. A year off the calendar tends to do that naturally.
Achieving a level of success also changed the dynamic. Players would rather deny that than acknowledge it. No outsider can prove it, after all.
The different vibe is really as impossible to identify as it is to ignore, but it’s evident to anybody who has spent the last 13 weeks around this team. This season doesn’t just look different, as the 2-4 record implies. It also feels like something is missing, something more than an All-Pro safety and cornerback.
Angelo was on to something last January when he tried articulating what made that Bears team different. In the days before Super Bowl XLI, center Olin Kreutz also recalled how he and veteran guard Ruben Brown noticed from the first week of ’06 training camp that a special mix of personalities and shared goals existed.
After four losses in six games this year, at least one member of the Bears football brain trust has mentioned poor chemistry as one of the factors in the bad start. After this week of run-ins, missed hits and errors, is that really so hard to believe?
Harris stepped up to say the Bears haven’t been as hungry since the Super Bowl, but Urlacher shot down that theory like it was an Internet rumor.
Adewale Ogunleye painted a picture of an overconfident Bears team already wondering about the dry heat of Glendale, Ariz., site of Super Bowl XLII, but Urlacher didn’t agree with that assessment either.
Hmmm. Do these guys talk?
Urlacher also said the Bears have to finish 8-2 to make the playoffs. Coach Lovie Smith indirectly corrected his captain by saying the Bears only worried about going 1-0 Sunday in Philadelphia.
Clearly, the Bears are groping for answers as well as intangibles. This is what happens when teams underachieve.
Good teams sound like they’re on the same page. Bad teams sound like they’re reading from different books.
Smith and offensive coordinator Ron Turner also gave conflicting views about why Cedric Benson didn’t carry the ball in the final 20 plays of last Sunday’s second quarter against Minnesota after gaining 46 yards on nine carries in the first 20 minutes of the game.
Smith mentioned something about the flow of the game. Turner blamed it on wanting to get Garrett Wolfe a series and playing Adrian Peterson on passing downs.
Neither explanation acknowledged that forcing Benson to re-start his engine contributed to his getting just 21 yards on his final nine carries.
Meanwhile, Brian Griese is dropping not-so-subtle hints to Turner that he would like to take more shots downfield. Muhsin Muhammad would welcome Turner finding ways to isolate him over the middle as he did on the 33-yard TD against Minnesota.
And it can’t be long before Bernard Berrian wants more chances to catch the deep ball to make the most of his contract drive for new agent Drew Rosenhaus.
And the offense is the part of the dysfunctional Bears that actually functions.
On defense, nickel back Ricky Manning Jr. justifiably wondered why he wasn’t starting, Danieal Manning finally agreed that moving between safety and cornerback made him a jack of all trades and master of none and Harris expressed the need for the defense to adjust if things aren’t working.
Team chemistry?
Another loss and that will be one explosive mixture brewing in a Bears locker room already bubbling with frustration.
As much as it bugged the rest of the team, maybe the Bears miss having Rex Grossman take the brunt of the scrutiny. Maybe that was one of the overlooked positives of having Grossman start: Little else mattered and a common bond formed defending him.
Griese is only slightly more efficient — he has six interceptions in three games just like Grossman did — and far less polarizing.
There will be no Web sites devoted to Griese’s benching, no small forests dying so that newspapers can debate his worthiness as the starter, no one target to absorb the hits that now ricochet off other teammates.
Polarizing or not, Grossman gave the ’06 Bears an identity that out of necessity helped establish an esprit de corps this team has yet to develop.
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dhaugh@tribune.com
