Bears Blitz

Published by Darrell Horwitz on January 9, 2011
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Chicago Bears

SORRY, WE INTERRUPT OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED ARTICLE TO BRING YOU THIS BREAKING NEWS:

The Chicago Bears face more adversity next week having to play the ‘feared’ 7-9 Seattle Seahawks in the NFL playoffs next Sunday.

WE NOW BRING YOU BACK TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED ARTICLE.

Anybody who reads me on a regular basis knows my thoughts on Chicago Bears coach Lovie Smith. I have been a detractor, to say the least, but not anymore. 

It’s hard for me to say that, because there is nothing I hate more than a windsock, but what I heard the other day changed my mind. 

Bears general manager Jerry Angelo, in his season-ending address to the media, said the magic words that made me see the light: “I don’t see this as a team with great talent.”

I was hamstrung. I had thought the Bears had the best collection of players in the league, and I was disappointed they weren’t undefeated. That was why I was railing on Lovie Smith so much.

Had I known the team’s shortcomings, I would have not been so judgemental and disapproving of him.

Angelo went on to talk about all of the adversity the Bears had to overcome. He said, “I think we accomplished a lot, because the deck was stacked against us.”

That made me think of the 17 players they had on injured reserve this year, and the resiliency they displayed in getting past those hardships and making the playoffs.

Oops, sorry, my mistake. That was their division rival, the Green Bay Packers, who overcame a plethora of injuries and still made the playoffs.

The Bears, meanwhile, have been the healthiest team in the league this year.

Well, they had a really hard schedule and still got a bye.

Actually they had one of the easiest schedules in the NFL, and their degree of difficulty through the first 10 games of the season was the softest in the league.

Nothing went their way this year. They had to earn everything they got.

Oops again.

I forgot the Calvin Johnson catch Week 1 against the Detroit Lions, though it is a league rule that a catch is not always a catch.

And who was their quarterback for most of that game after their starter went down with an injury? At least he wasn’t the third-stringer Detroit ran out there for the next game against the Bears; yet they still came close to beating them.

In fact, they faced a lot of third-stringers this year, along with opponents playing “home” games not in their home stadiums.

And the hardships continue for the Bears as Seattle upset New Orleans, and Green Bay beat the Eagles. The Bears get their first playoff game against the only under.500 team in the history of the playoffs while Atlanta, as the No. 1 seed, gets Green Bay.

Who would you rather play?

So what exactly was that adversity that Jerry Angelo was talking about?

Of course, when Angelo talks, you usually need a translator. Jerry has a tendency to be dyslexic.

Once when interviewing a coaching candidate, he said, “We brought him in here to get his football information.”

That doesn’t even compare to the time when he was talking about his plans for the team and he said, “We don’t want to show them our geniuses.” Obviously, with that statement, there’s no worry anyone is going to mistake him for a genius.

It seems like I lost track of where I was going with this. I was trying to come clean and admit I was wrong about Lovie Smith.

But after remembering what Angelo said in the past, and his delusional rant about the team overcoming adversity when anyone can see that’s just not true, I go back to a quote the late, great, Gilda Radner was famous for on “Saturday Night Live.”

Never mind.

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