The Bears couldn’t be more different this year from last, yet their fortunes remain almost exactly the same. A year ago the Bears were a cautious team that wasn’t going to beat itself; this year the Bears are gamblers willing to risk it all on a big play. A year ago the Bears had a quarterback who wasn’t going to win many games on his own but wasn’t going to be responsible for many losses either; this year the Bears have a quarterback who loses a game and then wins a game–on the same afternoon. A year ago the Bears had a tough, proud, sturdy defense that would give no quarter; this year the Bears have a defense with a disturbing tendency to fall apart on big plays, especially on third down.
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A good coach usually puts the stamp of his personality on a team, and the odd thing is that the Bears have had the same coach for this year, last year, and in fact the year before that. Dave Wannstedt is considered a good coach, but at this point a Chicago fan would be hard-pressed to describe just what his coaching personality is. He came to the team as a defensive specialist, but during the off-season the team stressed offense over defense in its personnel moves. Of course, offense had the most glaring weaknesses a year ago, but the team failed to address a weakness at linebacker–in fact, allowed former starting middle linebacker Dante Jones to depart via free agency–and that has created glaring weaknesses in the defense. At this point Wannstedt would have to be described as a pragmatist, willing and able to alter the team’s style and tactics to suit the personnel. Certainly he looked at the National Football League’s two powerhouses, the San Francisco 49ers and the Dallas Cowboys, and saw two teams with high-octane offenses, and he has attempted to emulate them–up to a point–to make the Bears more serious Super Bowl contenders. Yet in the give-and-take dynamic that is NFL parity under the salary cap, the Bears as a whole haven’t improved, even if they have at certain positions. When a team scrambles to beat an expansion club in the final minute at home–as the Bears did Sunday against the Carolina Panthers–it can’t realistically be described as a Super Bowl contender.
The question, however, is whether the more talented player is also the more able player. Not to slip into the gray area of Terry Bevington’s talent-ability distinction, but a player might have more overall talent and yet less ability to judge the most prudent course at any given stage of a game or season. It doesn’t take any large amount of recreational drugs to see the Bears 5-0 right now instead of 3-2–just a fairly vivid imagination. Imagine this: that the Bears had scored to take the lead late in their Monday-night game earlier this season against the Green Bay Packers, and that the defense had showed more spine in their 34-28 loss to the Saint Louis Rams three weekends ago.
The Bears made the National Football Conference playoffs last season in a four-team logjam with their Central Division rivals Green Bay, Minnesota, and Detroit. When tiebreakers were considered, however, the Bears were rated fourth, and that gave them a great advantage in this season’s schedule. The Bears are a playoff team playing a schedule designed for a fourth-place finisher. Foremost among its advantages is three weeks off in the middle of the season–weeks off, that is, if you add two straight games against expansion teams, last week’s Panthers and this week’s Jacksonville Jaguars, to the earlier bye. So the Bears, while 3-2, have squandered an opportunity to get out in front before the pivotal three-week stretch of the season–games at Minnesota and Green Bay sandwiched around the Pittsburgh Steelers at Soldier Field.
