[CBFF] THE WASHINGTON POST; Bears have familiar roar

[Steve Behrens]

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*Bears have familiar roar, playing like it's 1985*
By Mark Maske
THE WASHINGTON POST
10/22/2006

*LAKE FOREST, Ill. *— Ask these Chicago Bears about those Chicago Bears, and
you get mostly blank stares and shrugs. In an NFL locker room full of
20-somethings, 1985 may as well be the Jurassic Period. "I was 4,"
cornerback Nathan Vasher said with a quizzical look.

To many of these Bears, those Bears exist only by reputation, in record
books and in video games. "I was in kindergarten," defensive end Alex Brown
said. "I played with them on Tecmo Bowl. I'd win with them every now and
then. But (Walter) Payton, he was a lot better in real life than on the game
because if the defense stacks everybody up at the line, in the game you
can't get away but in real life he seemed to get away a lot. He was darn
good, man."

Ask those Bears about these Bears, and they say to wait and see.

"Before you talk about dominant teams, you have to get at least past the
midpoint of the season," Bears Hall of Famer Mike Singletary said this week.
"By that time, you've usually played against some of the good teams and some
of the bad teams in the league, and you can start to get an idea. We'll have
a feel for who they are after the midpoint."


This year's edition had its aura of invincibility punctured in Arizona on
Monday night, when it took one of the most remarkable comebacks in football
history for the Bears to remain undefeated by beating the Cardinals 24-23.

But even if it was short on dominance, it still was a sixth victory in six
games for the Bears, who have bounced back from a disappointing loss in the
second round of last season's NFC playoffs to be the league's best team so
far.

The defense that was fearsome last season has picked up where it left off.
The offense, at least before its pitiable showing Monday, had been revved up
by switching its focus from the running of tailback Thomas Jones to the
passing of quarterback Rex Grossman. The Bears won their first five games by
an average of 24 points, and anything short of a Super Bowl celebration at
the end of this season will be a letdown.

"We don't start the season wanting to win the division," Brown said last
week at Halas Hall, the team's headquarters. "There's a bigger picture. ...
There's a progression to be made to win the ultimate prize, but that's what
we want. There's really only one team that's actually happy each and every
year, and that's the Super Bowl champ. ... You play to win the Super Bowl,
not win 14 games and lose in the first round or whatever or win 11 games and
lose in the first round."

*The mission*

>From the moment the Bears lost to the Carolina Panthers in a conference
semifinal in January after going 11-5, winning the NFC North and securing a
first-round playoff bye, coach Lovie Smith's message to his players for this
season has been clear.

"We got a taste of success last season, the feeling of bringing the Bears
back where people were starting to talk about the Chicago Bears again,"
Smith said last week. "Our playoff game was electric ... but we didn't
finish. And this year, my early meetings, that's what I talked about: 'The
key word is finish. We need to finish the job this year. We're a good
football team. We have 22 starters coming back. This year, we need to
finish.' "

Smith said that when the initial sting of the playoff loss subsided, he was
able to appreciate the team's progress after going 5-11 in 2004, his first
season as an NFL head coach. Last season's Bears had the league's stingiest
defense, surrendering only 12.6 points per game. But after Grossman broke
his ankle in the preseason, the Bears had no Plan B at quarterback and ended
up starting rookie Kyle Orton. They managed to reel off eight straight wins,
but Smith's switch back to a healthy Grossman in the final weeks of the
regular season failed to pay off in the playoffs.

"Winning a world championship, that's hard," Smith said. "You shouldn't be
able to go from down there to up here right away. You take steps. So after I
had a chance to sit back for a while, looking at the big picture overall for
the season, I said: 'We made progress. We took a step. Next year, we need to
take another step.' "

Smith's players were less forgiving. "The last thing we remembered," Vasher
said, "was not playing well in the playoff game. ... We definitely fed off
of that. ... I think the real games for us pretty much start when we get to
the playoffs."

The Bears spent the offseason fine-tuning, not overhauling. They gave
themselves a reliable backup quarterback by signing Brian Griese as a free
agent. They added cornerback Ricky Manning, a restricted free agent, from
the Panthers. They traded out of the first round on draft day and took
defensive backs — safety Danieal Manning from Abilene Christian and
cornerback Devin Hester from the University of Miami — in the second round.
Some bigger moves in free agency were contemplated but never made.

"We caught a lot about not going out and getting more," Smith said. "But we
analyzed it ... we liked what we had. We just thought we had to stay with
the guys we had and let them grow."

*So far, so good*

It has worked out just fine. Third-year pro Bernard Berrian, after totaling
28 catches in his first two NFL seasons, has been given a chance to play at
wide receiver opposite Muhsin Muhammad and has become a deep threat.
Grossman, the injury-plagued fourth-year pro, has managed to stay in the
lineup and, until throwing four interceptions and losing two fumbles Monday
night, he had been among the league's top quarterbacks. His 1,391 passing
yards are the fifth-highest total in the NFL.

It is a talent-laden team. Grossman lobbied last week for all five members
of the offensive line to go to the Pro Bowl. Jones is a dependable runner
who has kept Cedric Benson, the fourth overall selection in the 2005 draft,
on the bench for nearly a season-and-a-half. The defense has game-changing
players almost everywhere you look, from Brown and Adewale Ogunleye at end
to Tommie Harris at tackle to Brian Urlacher and Lance Briggs at linebacker
to Vasher and safety Mike Brown in the secondary. Rookie defensive end Mark
Anderson, a fifth-round draft choice out of Alabama, ranks second in the NFL
with 6 1/2 sacks but didn't start until Monday night, when Ogunleye missed a
second straight game because of a strained hamstring.

The Bears outscored their opponents, 156-36, in their first five games. They
crushed the defending NFC champions, the Seattle Seahawks, 37-6 on Oct. 1 at
Soldier Field. Then came Monday, when Grossman became a turnover machine and
the Cardinals, with one win and a rookie starting quarterback in Matt
Leinart, rolled to leads of 20-0 at halftime and 23-3 late in the third
quarter. But the Bears found a way, scoring two touchdowns on Cardinals
fumbles and another on Hester's punt return and escaping when Arizona place
kicker Neil Rackers missed a 40-yard field goal try in the final minute.

Singletary, assistant head coach in charge of linebackers for the San
Francisco 49ers, is in a unique position to judge how these Bears stack up
against the '85 Bears, the team that went 15-1 with one of the best defenses
in history and overwhelmed the New England Patriots 46-10 in Super Bowl XX.

But Singletary, the middle linebacker on that team, isn't quite ready to
judge if the Bears of Smith, Grossman, Jones, Berrian, Muhammad, Alex Brown,
Ogunleye, Harris, Urlacher and Briggs can measure up to the Bears of Mike
Ditka, Jim McMahon, Payton, Willie Gault, Richard Dent, Dan Hampton, Steve
McMichael, William Perry, Wilber Marshall, Otis Wilson and Singletary.

"They've got guys who are tough and aggressive," Singletary said by
telephone this week. "They get after people. The guys up front are playing
really well. Mike Brown has always been one of my favorite players. Their
corners do a great job.

"They've just got people who are athletic and play together well. When
you're playing with confidence and nastiness, that's what you look for. They
play with swagger."

*Lovie's direction*

Smith reportedly is the lowest-paid head coach in the NFL this season, with
a salary of about $1.35 million. The Bears will have to pay handsomely for
dragging their feet last offseason in negotiating a contract extension with
him.

Smith preached to his players even during the five-game run of dominance to
open the season that they hadn't played a perfect game and they still could
get better. He undoubtedly will have the players' attention even more now,
after the near debacle in Arizona. Mike Brown also suffered a foot injury in
that game, and is expected to miss the rest of the season.

Grossman was asked last week if there had been any talk among the players
about going unbeaten all season. "No," he said. "Never."

It is a loose team with a confidence that borders on cockiness. "We pride
ourselves on not giving up any touchdowns. Or any field goals," Vasher said.
"That's kind of aggravating to us."