Now that the booze and pessimism has been slept off, I can sensibly react to the debacle at Lambeau that I witnessed last night. Admittedly, immediately following the game, this post would have looked a lot different. There would have been a lot more swearing, a lot more misspellings (is it possible to slur words through a computer? Probably), and a lot more negativity. Shout out to a friend of mine Perry for being the sober voice of reason for my pissedoff-ness. So today I’m looking back at the game, and while it was indeed a disaster, I am not as doom and gloom as one might think, and I don’t think I’m really being irrational about it either.
My reasons for feeling this will start off with, as it always seems to when discussing the Bears, the big guy under center, Jay Cutler. If you haven’t seen this article on Grantland.com about Jay today, go check it out, because it is phenomenal. If you have read it, I apologize if I may sound similar to the viewpoint that Bill Barnwell takes in that article, he just beat me to a lot of it. Basically though, the way I look at a game like last night is that while it sucked, and it was frustrating, I think we might just be looking at what we’re going to get as Bears fans. We brought in a gun slinger here folks, and sometimes what comes with a gun slinger are performances like we all saw last night. If you are looking for Jay Cutler to become Tom Brady, who is the model of consistency, you are going to be sorely disappointed. Last night was an example of a day when everything was off for Jay, and I think we may just have to face the fact that we are going to have a couple of those every year. (Also, side note, I really hate that it seems to consistently happen against the Packers. 8 TD’s and 16 INT’s against these guys since he’s been a Bear…..can’t you pick another team to suck against Jay?) At least it happened this year in week two as opposed to week eighteen or something like that.
And everyone really needs to stop calling for a “Cutler attitude change” or however the hell you want to word it. Because one thing is for damn sure, we are definitely stuck with the type of person Jay is, and that’s not changing anytime soon, and really I don’t have a problem with it. I’m happy he got a little fiery with his offensive line for almost getting him killed. He doesn’t seem to be under the impression that he played well at all either, so I wouldn’t call it passing the buck or anything. The funny thing is we see quarterbacks like Tom Brady do this same thing (yelling at players) on a weekly basis and nobody gives a damn. Granted, things got a little out of hand and nobody really approves of him bumping Jemarcus Webb after verbally castrating him on national television, but again, I could find worse things to be upset about. (Also, how much does that just epitomize Jemarcus Webb that even after Cutler treated him like an infant verbally and shoved him aside, Webb didn’t even so much as react? He’s such a pile of trash as a left tackle and it is just infuriating.) So really, of all the things that worry me going forward this season with the Bears, Jay Cutler is actually not that high on the list. He’s going to have games like last night, but he’s going to win games for us, too. I’ve seen him hoist a woefully inadequate team to an NFC Championship, and he looked real bad in a couple games that season as well. I get that there are certain people that don’t like Jay for a multitude of reasons (pouty face, smugly assholish, etc.), but whatever, it’s not changing people, and he’s really not that bad.
Want to know what really worried me last night? The Mike Martz-ness of what was happening with in game adjustments (or lack thereof). Mike Tice was heralded as the anti-Martz, someone who could simplify things down and make adjustments on the fly if needed. Was there a single person in the United States watching that game last night that didn’t realize that Cutler was in trouble time-wise in the pocket? The Bears have four tight ends on the depth chart…….where the hell were they? And I’m not talking about catching passes, because I’m aware that Kellen Davis caught the only Cutler TD pass. If we can’t keep Cutler on his feet, why are we not flanking the two tackles with tightends? We brought in receiving talent so that they could get open on their own. Who cares if we then can only put one to two wide receivers and a back out there? I don’t know if Brandon Marshall was going to be able to get open if we brought in extra blockers because frankly, we didn’t get a chance to find out a whole lot. It looked like he was occasionally breaking through and getting open last night, but Cutler was on the ground or scampering for his life almost anytime he was. Going hand in hand with this worry of mine is obviously how terrible the offensive line is, but we’ve seen this happen before. We knew this is what we were getting, and since franchise left tackles don’t grow on trees, we’re (at least for now) stuck with what we’ve got. There should have been something done to help that fledgling line out, and there wasn’t. Hopefully Tice learns from this and I won’t have to get that frustrated at him again.
Time for a couple bright and sunny moments, even though it seems like all is dark and gloomy in Bears world. First, while Jay Cutler took the cake for shittiest quarterbacking of the night, Superman Rodgers didn’t really light the world on fire either against the Bears defense. I was extremely worried that the middle of the defense would look really weak with a hobbled Urlacher out there. That wasn’t the case, as the Packers had to resort to a trick field goal play to get their first score, and I don’t count on the typically dependable Bears special teams getting caught with their pants down like that again. Unnoticed was the fact that Rodgers ended up on the ground with a menacing Julius Peppers standing over him quite often as well, and that sure was nice to see. I was nervous after they gave up 21 to the Colts, but holding down the Packers the way they did is encouraging to me because it shows that even if Jay is having a game like last night, the Bears will still be able to hold themselves within a Devin Hester punt return or a breakout run of being in the game. The Matt Forte injury is very troubling indeed, don’t get me wrong on that one either. However, again, bright spots in the darkness, this is what we brought Michael Bush in for people, and he does look good. Having Bush in there allows us to let Forte fully heal before he comes back and still have a decent threat in the running game. Don’t worry folks, we’ll hold together until Forte comes back from that high ankle sprain in a couple weeks.
So all in all, let’s keep in mind that this was only one game out of 16. And they would still have one in the loss column even if Cutler went 25 for 25 with three TD’s if they didn’t score more points than the other team. Adjustments need to be made, but with talent out there like this, I find it hard to believe that last night’s implosion carries over for the rest of the season. Most people picked us to lose this one anyways, so it’s not like it ruined our chances of hitting ten wins. Just bear down and wait out the week until next Sunday and see how they look, when they have a good chance to bounce back against the Rams. Go watch the White Sox or something until then Chicago people……they’re trying real hard to give away a playoff spot, too.
