admin @ Mon, 2005-10-17 11:00
What is the greatest hidden advantage in this team's arsenal? Is it Thomas Jones and the running game? Moose Muhammad and the passing game? It must be Brian Urlacher and the defense, right?
Nope. The best thing the Bears have going for them is a little beauty known as the NFC North, the wackiest, if not worst, division in football, where a .400 winning percentage is good enough for first place. Indeed, the Bears have won two games in five tries but sit proudly atop the standings after dominating Detroit and now Minnesota by 32 and 25 points, respectively.
Not a difficult thing to do against a Minnesota team that folded like a houseboat of cards the minute the Bears applied any pressure. The Vikings were coming off a bye week ruined by scandal but still had a couple of surprises for the Bears. They lined up in a 3-4 defense most of the game and had early success playing a field-position game interrupted only by aborted, missed and blocked field goals from former Bears kicker Paul Edinger.
Vikings coach Mike Tice said Edinger ''maybe tried too hard'' against his old team. Perhaps he suffered a flashback to his miserable form at Soldier Field last year. Maybe his feelings were hurt because he apparently didn't rate an invitation to the so-called Love Boat cruise on Lake Minnetonka during the bye week. That cruise-turned-sex party featuring 17 Vikings has led to a police investigation of organized prostitution across state lines because some of the women on board allegedly were flown in from Atlanta and Houston.
Regardless, the team that brought you the Original Whizzinator and the Super Bowl ticket-scalping scandal arrived in town feeling a bit self-conscious, shamed and reviled. Nothing like a game against an NFC North opponent to solve all ills. Of course, that's what the Bears were thinking, too, after sandwiching losses to Cincinnati and Cleveland around their bye week.
Green Bay enjoyed a bye this weekend, and Detroit found a way to lose to Carolina. That left the Bears talking about doing the unthinkable: stacking wins. In fact, their next four opponents have losing records -- Baltimore (2-3), at Detroit (2-3), at New Orleans (2-4) and San Francisco (2-4) -- and they face only four teams currently with winning records in their last 11 games.
They don't face Minnesota again until a New Year's Day game at the Metrodome, which comes a week after their Christmas game at Green Bay. Of course, everyone in the division looks forward to those kind of games.
Tice quickly tried to explain he only meant that the rivalry factor would keep his team involved. It's probably what he meant since he once painted his house green to remind him to beat the Packers. Nonetheless, you could certainly take it the other way.
If there was a lesson for the Bears, it's that they need to continue to run the ball with the hot hand of Jones and play the field-position game. When they battled bad field position early on and played into the Vikings' hands by throwing against the worst run defense in the NFL, they fell behind 3-0 and were hard-pressed to score.
But once Bobby Wade gave them great field position at the end of the half, the Bears drove for a touchdown, and the Vikings seemed to collapse. That explains why the Bears ran 14 fewer plays than Minnesota and gained nearly 100 fewer yards and still won handily.
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