The Chicago Bears: A Reliable Disappointment

Being a Chicago Bears fan is not unlike being a battered spouse who consistently returns to her (I'm saying "her" because men are normally the accepted perpetrators) abusive lover. I don't know why I'm surprised each year when my hopes are dashed by a thoroughly incompetent team.

I hate to say it, and haven't thus far because it may come across as racist, but Lovie Smith needs to be fired. A few years ago, he led the team to the Super Bowl, but that was mostly a confluence of flukes. I mean, Rex Grossman was the quarterback then, and he has since sucked to an almost unfathomable degree. He sucked then, even. We all knew it. As long as the team kept racking up victories, however, we didn't care. Most of these, though, came about because of turnovers capitalized upon by the defense.

The Bears' offense has always sucked. Let's get real. Even when they won, they were mediocre at best. Jim McMahon & Co. were the last collection of offensive players who could be called competent, but they had the great Walter Payton. Matt Forte keeps disappointing me with his piecemeal runs, especially since it's obvious to me that he can do better. It's been about twenty years since the team has had a viable offense. In recent years, Bears fans have had to suffer through the shit-eating grin of Grossman, and numerous other quarterbacks who glimmered with promise but ultimately failed miserably. Remember Cade McNown? Exactly...

In retrospect, Erik Kramer doesn't look so bad. Actually, he had moments of greatness, but these were negated by his inability to deliver in the post-season. Still, lest we forget, he has the highest passer rating of any Bears quarterback in history, including McMahon. Then came the aforementioned Grossman, whose Cheshire cat grin always incited blinding rage within me. It should be mentioned, begrudgingly, that he did lead the team to a Super Bowl, but, again, this was mostly a fluke due to the consistently astounding performance of the defense. After his abysmal failures, Kyle Orton and his neckeard took over. For a while, he looked okay, but he too was mainly a workhorse and not exactly a marquee player.

Now, with Jay Cutler, I thought perhaps Chicago had a bona fide quarterback. Based on tonight's play, though, it appears that I was mistaken. He compiled a treacherous three interceptions in the first half alone, and another on the final drive that could have brought the team back into the game. Granted, this may have been wishful thinking on my part because he had less than a minute to put something together, but the fact that this ended in another interception just twisted the knife in my back and made me feel the full extent of my disappointment.

I know that this was only the first game, but it almost completely annihilated my hopes for the season. Even Brian Urlacher, the superstar middle linebacker who left early with an injury that looked minor even if some of the commentators speculated that he may be out for the season, could not arouse my deflated faith in the team. Early in the game, I said "he looks old" to my friend Neal. He doesn't, though, and Neal knocked me back into coherence by telling me I was wrong. My pessimism has reached such astounding heights that it has almost no regard for reality.

I think this sort of cynicism is healthy, though. It's the mark of a true fan that I can be disappointed continuously and still look forward to redemption next week.

Don't get me wrong, though. I'm still pissed off. Lovie et al. need to get their shit together, or face complete obliteration. At times, I think the Bears deserve utter destruction as the only way in which the organization can pull itself together. It's like how I feel about Gary. It has been so devastated that to start an unstoppable conflagration, and to do this deliberately as a concerted, complete undertaking, might be the only way to rebuild the broken entity into something that isn't an absolute abomination.

An infernal inferno might be the hard truth of the path to redemption. I hope this is an exaggeration on my part, but I'm getting very close to waiting rapt in anticipation to yell, "Burn, baby, burn!"

R