The Bears’ playoff victory over the Minnesota Vikings Sunday was nothing less than actual, physical confirmation of a phenomenon we had only recently written off as a mirage. A month ago when we left the Bears they were steaming toward the National Football League playoffs as a solid second-echelon team–maybe not in the class of the San Francisco 49ers or the Dallas Cowboys but every bit as good as anyone else. The final four weeks of the regular season, however, made such thinking seem deluded. It wasn’t that the Bears went completely south–except for the New England game, they won when we expected them to win and lost when we expected them to lose–but even when they won they looked mediocre, and when they lost they looked very bad indeed.
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So the Bears slipped back. The Green Bay Packers smeared them for the second time this season when they traveled to Lambeau Field the following week. They returned home a beaten, diminished bunch, and had to squeeze out a victory over the woeful Los Angeles Rams the following week at Soldier Field. As far as the Bears’ record went, all this was according to plan. After the Bears beat the Arizona Cardinals to go into first place at 8-4, we had expected them to lose to the Vikings and Packers on the road and defeat the Rams and the New England Patriots at home to finish 10-6–surely good enough for a playoff spot. Yet the way in which the Bears lost to the Pack and defeated the Rams was disconcerting, and in the meantime the Patriots were becoming a power. Their second-year quarterback, Drew Bledsoe, had found himself, and their defense was playing with newfound confidence now that it didn’t have to worry about being chased back onto the field at any moment following a Bledsoe interception.
The Vikings, meanwhile, were beating the ‘Niners on the last Monday night of the season to claim first place in the Bears’ Central Division. That sounds more impressive than it actually was. The ‘Niners, who had already clinched home-field advantage through the playoffs, basically just put in an appearance so the NFL had a game to present on Monday Night Football–not unlike Walter Cronkite doing a cameo on Murphy Brown. The Vikings were in and would play host to the Bears, but they couldn’t feel much pride about the way they’d earned it.
The Vikings drove for a touchdown before the half, with big plays from Amp Lee and Cris Carter. Lee was a persistent problem for the Bears throughout the day, and somehow the Vikings kept creating situations where Carter, their best receiver, was being covered by Mangum, the Bears’ third- or fourth-best cornerback. Carter scored on a pass from Moon, but the Vikes went for the two-point conversion and failed–14-9 at the half.
That’s when Lee’s luck finally ran out. Again Moon hit him coming out of the backfield, but this time Mo Douglass smashed him from the side and Lee put
