You stand there and listen to the Bears talk about character, resiliency and guts being checked, and after a while, like a prisoner of war, you start to believe what they’re telling you.
It’s the postgame portion of the afternoon, just after the Bears have come back to beat the Lions 27-23, and you find yourself agreeing that the lads indeed were courageous on this fine Sunday and that you suppose it wouldn’t be so bad to forget your past life, marry a local girl and devote the rest of your life to the betterment of your newly adopted Fatherland.
But then a small, uncooperative voice in your head, a voice definitely not with the program, suggests, however quietly, that the Bears barely beat the worst team in football at home.
With the help of your comrades, you try to suppress the voice.
“It was a big-time gut check,” defensive coordinator Bob Babich says of the Bears’ 23-13 halftime deficit. “I mean, hey, we have a lot of pride, period. Things didn’t go well in the first half. We could have very easily tucked our tails and said, hey, things aren’t going well. But the players in particular made a decision that, hey, this is it.”
OK, that helps. You know you’re starting to feel better because you have an intense desire to goose-step past the reviewing stand.
The 5-3 Bears are alone in first place in the NFC North, thanks to a defense that finally found itself in the second half. They will be able to call on that memory if things get difficult in the playoffs.
Uh-oh. The voice. It’s back. It tells you that it’s an indictment of the Bears’ defense and coaching staff that the team came out flat against somebody named Dan Orlovsky. The voice further tells you that it is positive it saw Orlovsky in a late-night TV commercial telling viewers to call his toll-free number if they were in an auto accident and needed representation. Orlovsky&Orlovsky. Or something like that.
The voice has a mocking tone now: The Bears are so good that they can take an opponent lightly and then turn it on whenever they want?
“When we were down by 10 points and when you have character like we have, you have to step up,” Bears coach Lovie Smith says.
He’s right, the maximum leader is. You feel ashamed to be so weak as to harbor thoughts that the defense was anything but brave and noble as it fought back to a glorious victory Sunday.
“Yards, points, all that [stuff] — stats don’t mean nothing,” linebacker Brian Urlacher says. “The ones that matter are the ones in the win-loss column.”
A win is a win. You chant it while you work in the commune’s fields. Your chest swells with pride. Production is up!
The voice in your head seems to be gone now, which is a good thing, but an image starts flashing in your brain. You don’t want to think it’s post-traumatic stress disorder, but it very well could be. You keep seeing Bears quarterback Kyle Orton getting tackled hard late in the second quarter. You see him writhing in pain. Then you see him being carted off the field with an ankle injury that could keep him out up to a month.
Try as you might to block the memory, it’s impossible because there are tire tracks on Soldier Field from where the cart took Orton to the locker room. It’s like a searing scar across the grass.
“Rex came in and led us to a big win,” Smith reminds you.
The coach is right, of course. You focus on Grossman’s game-winning touchdown run, a 1-yard plunge in the fourth quarter that broke the Lions’ spirit. And you happily think about how hard Grossman spiked the ball after that run. So much excitement and redemption in that spike! You feel good for him. Benched in favor of Orton in training camp. Injured or booed most of his career in Chicago. And now this. You think he deserves votes for Worker of the Year.
Unfortunately, you’re starting to hear things again. The voice mentions that Grossman completed 9 of 19 passes for 58 yards and a touchdown, that he threw an interception and that his passer rating was a measly 49.9. The voice talks about a near future that could be populated by two people you never wanted to see again: Good Rex and Bad Rex.
You try to fight off the evil thoughts. You fear your neighbors are spying on you and will report your doubts to the state. But you’re having trouble muffling the voice.
The Lions are 0-8 and might not win a game this season. This is a team that, going into the game, was ranked near the bottom of many NFL categories. Yet it scored three straight touchdowns Sunday.
“At the end of the day, we got more points than them, and we’re 5-3. That’s all that matters,” cornerback Charles Tillman says. “If we win the Super Bowl 42-41, I’m the Super Bowl champion, bottom line, plain and simple.”
The Super Bowl. It stretches out before you like the promised land. You can almost reach out and grab it.
But you wonder out loud if anybody can tell you what happened to Devin Hester the Punt Returner.
And then there’s a knock on your door.
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rmorrissey@tribune.com
