Early this football season, safety Mike Brown looked at his Bears teammates and pronounced, “We’re just terrible. It’s like we suck.” The Bears were 1-3 at the time and appeared well on their way to fulfilling the prediction of Sports Illustrated’s Paul Zimmerman that they’d be the worst team in the NFL.
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The Bears might have benefited from the NFL’s emphasis on parity and an unbalanced schedule in which the worst teams from one season–last year’s Bears were 5-11–tend to play each other the next, meaning that some have to rise. But this year’s Bears eventually had to play somebody legitimate, and when they beat the talented Carolina Panthers at Soldier Field two weeks ago–to even both teams’ records at 7-3–they established themselves as Super Bowl contenders. It’s an impression they backed up last Sunday by beating the 7-3 Buccaneers in Tampa Bay. The style of play the Bears have arrived at–based on shirtsleeved defense even in cold weather and a running offense that emphasizes intricate line play–is the sort Bears fans have always favored, and in the win over the Panthers the crowd was louder and more avid than ever. By the end of that game, defensive backs Charles “Peanut” Tillman, Nathan Vasher, and, yes, Mike Brown were all standing on the Bears’ bench, woofing their pleasure at the fans.
But the key element of the transformed Bears was the defense. Coach Lovie Smith came in last year from Saint Louis, where he’d been a highly touted defensive coordinator, and he professed a new philosophy–an “attack” defense based on lean, quick, muscular players. The wheels spun at first, but the defensive line got better each game, with Alex Brown gaining consistency, Tommie Harris and the revived Adewale Ogunleye developing into impact players, and subs Michael Haynes and Tank Johnson shuttling in from down to down and series to series to keep everyone fresh. That lean, mean group produced 8 sacks against the Panthers, a team that had allowed only 12 all season. Meanwhile, key players Mike Brown and Tillman came back successfully from last year’s injuries, as did middle linebacker Brian Urlacher.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Streeter Lecka–Getty Images.
