No man is an island, entire of itself, not even Brian Urlacher.
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Though they weren’t as good going into this season as last year’s 13-3 record suggested–their one-and-out playoff appearance showed that–they also weren’t as awful as their four straight losses this season now suggest. Only against the Green Bay Packers, unfortunately in a Monday night game broadcast nationally on ABC, did the Bears seem overmatched. That game could have been closer than the 34-21 final if quarterback Jim Miller hadn’t thrown a goal-line interception while trying to rally the Bears in the fourth quarter, but while Miller had to squeeze every completion through one or two defenders, the Packers’ Brett Favre was throwing to wide-open receivers throughout the first half–indicating that the Pack had the Bears’ defense figured out beforehand. The game showed the Packers to be an elite team in this year’s NFL, while the Bears would have to compete in the vast and turbulent middle ground where so much swings on so little–the very arena in which they excelled last season.
Sunday’s game in Detroit confirmed how low the Bears have fallen and showed why. The loss of Washington explained much on the defensive side. The Lions came in with a rushing attack that was averaging a meager 3.3 yards a pop but it would run roughshod. After a first quarter that looked like a mid-70s matchup between these two franchises–when both were almost completely inept and their games were dreary affairs–the Bears opened a 3-0 lead with a drive just good enough to get Paul Edinger into field-goal range. The defense held on the Lions’ next possession, but punter John Jett pinned the Bears inside the five and then Anthony Thomas coughed up the ball. The Lions’ James Stewart plowed through the Bears line on the next play to score. After the Lions harried backup quarterback Chris Chandler into an interception, rookie Detroit quarterback Joey Harrington found a man open at the goal line, and it took a great play by Chicago safety Mike Brown to halt him at the one. For three downs the Bears somehow held, but on fourth down Stewart cruised in off left tackle, putting the Bears in a hole at 14-3. In overtime Stewart again would burst through for a couple of big runs, one of them a sweep that carried Detroit from midfield to the Bears’ 35 to set up the game-winning field goal. The Bears couldn’t stop the run when they needed to, and even when they held the Lions to a field goal after a long drive to preserve their lead at 20-17, it looked like they were playing a ball-control defense, allowing the Lions to run the ball almost at will and hoping to run out the clock.
