Awash in the patriotism and optimism that will mark the first Sunday of the season at Soldier Field, maintain clear eyes when viewing the 2011 Bears.
Can anyone see one area the Bears obviously upgraded in the abbreviated offseason? I can’t. While every NFC North rival appears to have gotten better, the Bears mostly got older.
The team that takes on the Falcons at noon surely will look new but hardly improved. All the talk about quarterback Jay Cutler’s trimmer physique took attention away from a roster considerably thinner as well, since we last saw the Bears in the NFC championship game.
A cobbled-together depth chart includes five undrafted rookies, a backup defensive end who was out of football last year, a No. 3 quarterback who would struggle against BCS competition and a newly signed fullback the UFL’s Sacramento Mountain Lions will miss. Sorry, but an NFL team’s scouting department shouldn’t merit more preseason recognition than any position group. And the person the Bears need most to have a good year really shouldn’t be head athletic trainer Tim Bream.
But then the inevitable injuries the Bears avoided during a fluky 2010 season could expose the way general manager Jerry Angelo and stealth sidekick Tim Ruskell built this team.
All the peripheral nonsense at training camp overshadowed the paucity of proven backups. An odd but eventful month produced, among other things, angst over letting Olin Kreutz walk over $500,000, anxiety over the Chicago Park District neglecting its most important patch of grass and acrimony over contracts. It was easy to ignore how a team seven points from playing in Super Bowl XLV let the gap widen between them and the Packers.
Rearranging more than rebuilding, the offensive line merely shuffled players. It essentially replaced Kreutz in the huddle with unproven guard Lance Louis and tackle Frank Omiyale with rookie first-rounder Gabe Carimi. The revamped unit performed respectably in preseason but I suggest holding your applause until the first three opponents are done blitzing.
Did adding tight ends Matt Spaeth and Kyle Adams after subtracting Greg Olsen and Desmond Clark make the position deeper or just different and less dependable?
Admittedly, I liked the low-risk Roy Williams signing. But if the Bears get more out of their wide receivers it will be due to familiarity with Mike Martz’s offense more than the presence of Williams, who has yet to resemble anything but a 55-catch guy. Angelo would say there were no 80-catch guys available.
Martz willing, the Bears won’t wait until midseason to lean on the ground game behind an adequate run-blocking line that should allow Forte to prove he is an elite back. Cutler will have to transcend poor protection to put up big numbers and has ability rare enough to do so. Expect the Bears to move the chains, but it won’t be an offense anybody will be tempted to nickname.
Defensively, remember the most overlooked point of preseason: the Bears never replaced outside linebacker Pisa Tinoisamoa. Injuries limited Tinoisamoa to 10 starts last year, but he contributed to a dominant defense. Replacement Nick Roach offers experience, but the Bears’ negligence has made them overly reliant on Roach’s health. Untested linebackers Brian Iwuh and Dom Decicco are the only backups.
Defensive tackle could evolve into a strength if Texans reject Amobi Okoye continues his resurgence. Sack man Julius Peppers needs help off the opposite edge from whatever nickel pass-rusher emerges out of a list of maybes and what-ifs. A status quo secondary concerned the Bears enough to make Patriots castoff Brandon Meriweather the team’s highest-paid safety one week before the opener. That doesn’t sound like a plan as much as an impulse.
In the past the Bears always could count on the kicking game to compensate for offensive or defensive lapses. But roster inexperience and a rules change threaten to alter the Bears Way. For the first time since Lovie Smith arrived, questions persist about special teams.
Many of us misread the Bears before the 2010 season and it would be fun to be so wrong again. That success answered major questions surrounding Smith. A year later, 2011 will define the Angelo-Ruskell tandem.
Consider that the Bears finished last season only a couple players away from the Super Bowl yet somehow now seem further away from the playoffs. I know it’s not the view from Lake Forest, but, from here, the Bears look closer to being 8-8 than on their way to Indianapolis.
Twitter @DavidHaugh
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