Rex Grossman sprinted off the field wearing a smile that said “I told you so.”
Danieal Manning clinched the game ball that he had intercepted at the end so tightly it nearly deflated. And Adewale Ogunleye stood in a crowd of reporters yelling at the top of his lungs, his voice booming with the excitement of a guy you would have thought had just won a championship.
In a sense, Sunday’s 17-6 win over the Raiders was like a playoff game for the Bears.
“The biggest thing is not to lose confidence in yourself,” Ogunleye said. “There’s always going to be doubters. But we’ve got to rally and fight together. And good things will happen.”
Things looked bleak for the Bears until Grossman – who entered the game late in the first half after Brian Griese was sacked and suffered a shoulder injury – found a streaking Bernard Berrian for a 59-yard touchdown with 3 minutes, 11 seconds remaining. It was the first touchdown of a desultory offensive game in which the Bears trailed 6-3.
Grossman had fumbled the first snap he had taken since Week 3, but he rebounded by sailing a perfectly placed ball over Berrian’s left shoulder. Berrian sped past inexperienced Raiders cornerback Chris Carr and waltzed into the end zone for just his second touchdown of the season.
“At that time of the game, we needed anything to happen,” Berrian said. “A long run or some type of play to get our emotions high and get the ball in the end zone.”
Nobody was riding higher afterward than Grossman, whose exhilaration was evident with every chest bump and hand slap. He claimed he wasn’t interested in silencing his critics as much as he was in getting the Bears back in the playoff conversation — four other NFC wild-card contenders lost Sunday.
“I just feel so happy for this team to get a must-win,” he said.
The Bears, now 4-5, will be hard-pressed to catch NFC North leader Green Bay (8-1) in the division race. But if they can string together some wins in the second half of the season, the word “playoffs” might re-enter their vocabulary.
“We’re down to the last straw,” Berrian acknowledged. “We really can’t have any losses if we want to get to the playoffs.”
Before they can start talking in terms of going undefeated, the Bears still have some issues to address. Sunday was supposed to be a game that played into their hands, with the battle of field position an important element. The Raiders brazenly kicked to Devin Hester and did a good job containing the All-Pro returner. Cedric Benson had just 76 yards on a season-high 29 carries against one of the league’s worst rushing defenses.
Thankfully for the Bears, the Raiders were simply bad on offense, with quarterback Josh McCown rarely going down field and getting sacked four times. Justin Fargas had 81 rushing yards, but they were quiet yards. And the Bears finally created some turnovers.
But even when the Bears had good field position, they squandered it. At least three penalties proved costly, including a holding call on Brendon Ayanbadejo that negated Hester’s 64-yard punt return.
It was still a 3-3 game heading into the fourth quarter when the Raiders’ strong-legged kicker, Sebastian Janikowski, booted a 52-yard field goal to put his team up three with under five minutes remaining. The Bears responded with a game-winning drive that took all of three plays and covered 70 yards. Grossman found Benson for an 11-yard pickup, then connected with Berrian on the game-winner.
The play might have saved the season and revived Grossman’s career. He finished 7-of-14 passing for 142 yards and a touchdown with a quarterback rating of 109.8. He was sacked twice.
He threw one ball that made all of Chicago cringe. But Grossman also made some smart decisions, throwing the ball away when he didn’t have anything and protecting it on those sacks.
“He’s never moped around our building,” center Olin Kreutz said. “He’s always come to work prepared and got ready for the games. With all the criticism he’s taking about being demoted, he could have easily said, ‘Screw it, screw the team.’ But he didn’t. “I hope it showed everybody outside what the team has known for a long time — he’s a professional and he’s a team guy.”
———–
vxmcclure@tribune.com
