While it is unlikely the Bears can get the league record for fewest touchdowns in a season–a meager two by the 1933 Cardinals–they do have an excellent chance of besting their own low mark of 16, that coming in nine games in ’82.
With a complete schedule, including a week of rest, the Bears ought to have no trouble stopping at a dozen touchdowns, or even fewer.
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“This football team has a lot of outstanding young men and a lot of outstanding football players. It is going to win a lot of football games,” rookie Curtis Enis said after Friday night’s 24-7 humiliation by the Jets. As the Bears completed a winless preseason, Enis continued to offer proof that he has no idea what he is talking about.
And his is just the sort of attitude that can ruin the chance this team has to become the most special Bears team ever. It is all out there to be had.
Sure, last season was a record effort from the Bears’ defense in most points allowed, but this bunch is perfectly capable of giving up more than 421.
Marty Carter alone should be good for half of that.
“People will talk about the negatives,” Dave Wannstedt said after the first completely winless Bears preseason in 20 years. “I’ll hit on the positives. Our special teams were good.”
Not to worry, coach. That can be fixed.
Many of last year’s record-setters are still on the team, and the linebackers are already making up for the absence of Bryan Cox, all three of them echoing Cox’s remarkable duality, the inability to cover passes or make tackles.
“We have to get the quarterback on the ground,” Wannstedt said. “In this league you can’t rely on him throwing an incomplete pass.”
Shhhh. Bears opponents will stop building their defensive game plans on the incomplete pass.
It may require the Bears to play up to their ability every week, but these Bears easily can lose every game they play, and by a score of 27-6, thereby authenticating themselves as the worst Bears team ever.
On both sides of the ball.
Oh, there have been awful Bears offenses–the first Wannstedt team scored fewer points in a 16-game season than any other–and there have been brutally incompetent Bears defenses–the ’89 team gave up 358 yards a game–but this Bears team has the opportunity to set a new standard of stink.
“Until we can run the ball on a consistent basis and not give up big plays on defense, we’ll have a tough time,” Wannstedt said.
See, the Bears know exactly what they have to do.
By many estimates, the worst Bears team of all was the ’69 team of Jim Dooley, which won just one game, though there is some argument for Abe Gibron’s 3-11 bunch in 1973.
All disputes can end with this team. The offensive line has shown a consistent inadequacy, on both pass and run blocking. And a timely holding penalty is always available to blunt any inconsiderate touchdown drive.
Quarterbacking is taking care of itself. The only competent and dangerous one of the bunch, Erik Kramer, already has put himself in danger of missing at least the first game with a hyperextended left big toe.
This will leave things in the hands of young Steve Stenstrom, the heir appendix.
“I feel good about our offense,” Stenstrom said, obviously up to a challenge.
The secondary has shown the capacity not only to interfere downfield, but still allow the other team to catch the ball as well. So no one can accuse the safeties and cornerbacks of not trying.
It took the 1968 and ’69 teams two seasons to lose a record eight in a row. These Bears can do it before November.
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“We are not a team that can drop a pass when a first down is made, or miss a field goal,” Wannstedt said.
Oh, sure they are.