The Bears are a quarter of the way through their season, and one ought to be able to come to some conclusions about them by this time. Yet the only thing that can be said is that love ’em or leave ’em–and to tell the truth, I’m not sure yet which side I come down on–they sure are exciting. They don’t offer much in the way of top-quality football, but for high-profile drama and human frailty they’re just about unmatched on the sports scene in this town.
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Of course, that’s obvious now, but it wasn’t so clear three weeks ago. In spite of allowing Barry Sanders a touchdown romp in which he seemingly bounced off every member of the Chicago defense, the Bears played very well against the Lions, very much within themselves, and they scored to take the lead early in the fourth quarter. Then, however, the Lions scored, working their fleet covey of wide receivers against the Bears’ prevent defense, and it looked as if the balance of power in the Central Division of the National Football Conference had indeed shifted to Detroit a year ago. But miracle of miracles, quarterback Jim Harbaugh engineered a near-perfect two-minute drill, finishing it with a pass that he said later he tried to plant in Tom Waddle’s belly button, and the Bears had won, had pulled it out. Maybe they would go 5-0 to start after all, and after that what would the future hold?
The offensive line, without the traded Jay Hilgenberg and the injured Mark Bortz, lacked depth and consistency. The career backup Jerry Fontenot replaced Hilgenberg, and rookie tackle Troy Auzenne usurped last year’s phenom Stan Thomas (the Bears’ Tony Mandarich) as a starter, allowing John Wojciechowski to spell Bortz at guard, but the group was still prone to misfiring on running plays and panicking against opponent blitzes. The wide receivers still lacked the requisite speed, a fault that was held against everyone but Waddle, the token white guy. Halfback Neal Anderson showed flashes of his old speed, but continued to run too often with his head down, awaiting the tackle, and fullback Brad Muster remained prone to injury. Harbaugh, meanwhile, lost all the composure he displayed in the Detroit game; he got a case of happy feet, stamping his shoes as he waited for his receivers to come open and throwing the ball with his weight back, the way a shortstop throws from the hole behind third base, which made his passes float.
This is still a franchise on a slow but increasingly rapid decline from its moment of glory at Super Bowl XX in 1986. Yet I’ve become as resigned to watching as Ditka was resigned in defeat following the Monday-night game with the Giants (and he was very resigned that night). The Bears seem to represent the city now more accurately than they ever have. It’s one thing for a team of supermen, like the ’85 Bears, to represent us as we like to picture ourselves as a city–brash, cocky, and not merely able but superior in ability–but that is, ultimately, a fantasy, a balm for a cancerous rust. Today’s Bears represent today’s Chicago, and they do so quite well: they are prone to punching holes in their own river, to bonehead mistakes that muff rehabilitation projects, and from play to play they aren’t sure whether to opt for gambling or industry as the chosen way of doing things. They’re ours, God love ’em, and we’re stuck with ’em.
