Oh, how football never fails to entertain. We learned a few things this Sunday that you could probably say everyone knew all along. The Indianapolis Colts are far and away the best team in the league, and all signs point to this season being their year. The way they manhandled Jacksonville, a team that normally plays them close, right from the opening drive was something to behold. Sure the Jags made a last ditch come back and didn't allow Indy to cover the spread, ruining the weeks of gamblers around the country in the process, but the game wasn't even close. The Colts essentially imposed their will on a Jaguars team that normally gives them fits.
My Chicago Bears got spanked by the Pittsburgh Steelers, a team that is dangerously close to being bumped out of the AFC playoff race. The Steelers utilized an ancient Jerome Bettis to literally steamroll the vaunted Bears defense, which has drawn some premature comparisons in the media to the vaunted 1985 Monsters of the Midway unit in the past few weeks. Yes, the Bears posted an eight game winning streak, but the last time the Bears faced a playoff caliber team out of the AFC, they got roasted by the Cincinnati Bengals. The 1985 squad they are not.
I'm not a big fan of the way Lovie Smith is handling this whole quarterback situation, and his reluctance to bring Grossman back into the starting role is genuinely crippling the Bears offense, or whatever semblance of offense the team can muster. As a devout Bears fan, I was happy to see the team go after a marquee wide receiver in Muhsin Muhammad, but all I see is our starting quarterback doing a better job of negating his effectiveness than any defense could ever hope to do. In the opening series for the Bears offense, I watched Kyle Orton drop back to pass on 3rd down and 7. The offensive line and running backs picked up two blitzers from the secondary beautifully, buying Orton plenty of time to get an uncontested pass off. Moose ran a little slant and got plenty of separation in single coverage, and Orton proceeded to sail the ball five yards over his head on a paltry eight yard slant route, a throw that any college quarterback worth his salt would be able to make - even in cold weather. Sadly, these are not isolated incidents, as a good throw from Orton comes along about as often as a good Saturday Night Live sketch. The bottom line is that the offense is not getting any results, and it is starting to put too much pressure on the defense, which looked genuinely exhausted today and was severely weakened by the absence of Mike Brown. The tackling was plain awful, and Bears as a whole looked terrible. Bobby Wade is still returning, or more accurately, dropping punts, and the Minnesota Vikings are looking more and more like a contender each successive week.
Looking at Grossman's history, there is no way indication that he is going to be any worse than Orton currently is. In fact it's almost impossible to be that bad. Lovie should have maintained that Grossman was the team's starter during this entire winning streak, because Orton has just not produced enough to have the starter's role giftwrapped for him.
Just thinking about the performance in today's game leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. Let's hope next week's game against the Atlanta Falcons features Rex Grossman taking snaps under center.
