Vigilante Sports

After watching the first half of this game I was a little worried. The Bears looked terrible. Their running game was abysmal and their passing attack wasn’t much better. Rex Grossman didn’t have time, and when he did have time his happy feet forced him to throw a bad ball. Not that his receivers helped him too much. Dropped balls continue to plague this receiving corps.

The big change came when the Bears got the ball back right before halftime. After shooting themselves in the foot with sacks and stupid penalties, they were looking at a 3rd down and 22 yards to go. Ron Turner calls a draw play for Thomas Jones. Generally teams call this play when they have an impossible down and distance (3rd and 22 counts), just to gain positive yards and get to a better place to kick the ball from. In this case the offensive line showed up, like they hadn’t all game, and Jones proceeded to break off a 26 yard run. After that the Bears offense started to click. Grossman hit Muhsin Muhammad on a crossing pattern to keep the drive moving. Mark Bradley grabbed his first career touchdown to pull the Bears within 3 points, and gave the Bears a ton of momentum going into halftime.

The Bears offense saw a weakness in the Giants defense. His name was Corey Webster. Grossman seemed to single him out and pick on him consistently over the course of the second half. I believe he was throw at 11 times, 6 or 8 (I can’t remember) of those balls were caught for a total of 125 yards and a touchdown. That guy got torched. It was the key to Bears offense in the second half. I have to commend not only Rex Grossman for finding Webster on each of those plays, but also Ron Turner for calling the plays that enabled Grossman to take advantage of that mismatch. That success in turn contributed to the success of Thomas Jones and the Bears running game (which was totally shut down in the first half). The Bears would do well to continue to find those holes in the defense and exploit them to get their passing game going, and open up the field for Jones and the running game.
In general, the second half turned into a pretty wild ride. Ed Hochuli did not have his best game in my opinion. It seemed pretty plain to me that Peanut Tillman’s knee was down after he recovered Plaxico Burress’ fumble. That turned out not to really matter because Devin Hester ran back a missed field goal 108 yards for a touchdown. I was a little nervous up until that point. The Giants were within striking distance, only trailing by 4 points. That iced the game and seemed to take any wind out of the Giants’ sail. The Bears tacked on a Thomas Jones touchdown and then were able to run out the clock to finish off their 38-20 win over the Giants.

The win gives the Bears a leg up on the Giants regarding home field advantage in the playoffs. Soldier Field is a pretty nasty place to be in January. If the Bears are able to maintain their performance from tonight the second half of the season I think they will play host to at least one playoff game in January. And after that, you never know what will happen.

An Aside:
A reader asked who he should have started on his fantasy team, Rex Grossman or Eli Manning. And I said start Manning if Plaxico Burress was able to play. Hindsight is always 20/20, but the Bears defense did a number on Manning and the Giants offense. In my fantasy league Manning got -2 points and Grossman ended with 25 points. Luke, my bad. I still don’t trust the Bears offense. I’m glad when they play well, and I have Thomas Jones as my 3rd running back, but I wouldn’t depend on anyone on the Bears offense to deliver week in and week out. That’s why I recommended Manning. I also should say that I recently traded Manning because he was underperforming this year. More fantasy notes to come in the near future.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 12th, 2006 at 11:27 pm and is filed under Chicago Bears, Football, NFL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.