For the Bears’ last home game of the season–a frigid, icy affair against the Detroit Lions–head coach Dave Wannstedt wore a watch cap tilted across his forehead under his headphones. With its jaunty slant, the cap made him look as if his nickname ought to be “Frenchy,” and silly as it seemed there was something apropos in that. The Bears’ season had the tone of French philosophy to it. There was logic that made no sense (the quarterback can’t throw a square-out? tear the route out of the playbook), there was circular reasoning (four straight road wins followed by four season-ending losses), and–above all–there was the impression, at the close of the term, that one’s life was no better for having studied it. It was absurd. Also, as in French philosophy, long-term prospects looked to remain constant but there was no guarantee that conditions in the short term wouldn’t get a whole lot worse.
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Wannstedt fared about as well as any rookie coach could, considering. His fresh and relatively liberal-minded approach to the game (liberal compared to Mike Ditka, that is) revitalized veterans like Steve McMichael and Richard Dent–for most of the season anyway. He presided over the maturation of Donnell Woolford and Dante Jones and the recovery of Tim Worley, salvaged from drug-tainted limbo in Pittsburgh. He kept Jim Harbaugh’s mistakes to an absolute minimum, but to do so he had to cut Harbaugh’s strengths to a minimum, to a point where Harbaugh began to resemble a judicious (if not exactly intelligent) Bobby Douglass. The offensive line was refurbished but not entirely improved; its intricate trap blocking in the middle of the season (most evident in the upset of the Kansas City Chiefs) produced something of a pipe dream. What was evident, in the postmortem, was the Bears’ lack of quality at the so-called skill positions–no receivers worth throwing to, no running backs worth handing off to, no quarterback worth hiking to.
The final four games offered more questions than answers, especially when Peter Tom Willis showed himself no hidden savior in his interception-prone start against the Denver Broncos. Harbaugh returned to put together a couple of good drives against the Lions, but that was it and in the end it wasn’t enough to win, as the defense suffered a relapse of its late-game weariness. And the defense, the sole source of pride, suffered a breakdown in the finale against the Los Angeles Rams last Sunday. Here’s something to think about: when the Bears were winning, one was hearing about Trace Armstrong every few plays; when they went down the drain in the final month Armstrong disappeared, and he even–horror of horrors–wore long sleeves under his jersey in the cold loss to the Lions, a violation of the Bears-weather dress code.
These are the same hypocrites who accuse college athletics programs of being way stations for reluctant students. They criticize coaches and administrators for allowing athletes to coast through college–or, worse, to coast out without a degree–while demanding that a season that is already three or four games longer than it was only a generation ago be increased another three or four weeks. (As recently as 1968 Ohio State won the national championship with a 10-0 record; Florida State finished, last Saturday, with a 12-1 mark. Any feasible playoff system would have to begin with eight teams–at least–meaning three games and three weeks to narrow them to a single champion.) In their moralistic mode, sportswriters insist on academics, but reserve the right to shift into their competition mode to insist on a “rightful” national champion.
So let the debate rage about which team would win at a neutral site (the Irish beat the Seminoles at South Bend); that’s a healthy, meaningless argument, the sort sports is based on. But leave the debate about whether there should be a playoff system out of it.
