Out of courtesy, we turn the sound down to bring you the last three plays of another Bears defeat. Whoooomp. Crunnnch. Whackkkk. Sack. Sack. Sack. Game over, draft position preserved, Dave Wannstedt still employed.
More than that, Wannstedt is steamed. He is raging at officials, growling at the press, biting off answers and snarling at fate, Lambeau Field and cruel circumstance, acting a lot like a coach who has lost the last half-dozen games should be acting.
“If anybody’s not for instant replay, take a look at this and give it some thought,” Wannstedt said.
Well, we are and we have. Packers kick returner Roell Preston did fumble a ball that would have given the Bears a better chance to win at the end, and maybe Dorsey Levens fumbled on the play after that.
Now we are to believe that the Bears were jobbed like the Steelers were and Buffalo, real teams, with real ambitions?
How tardy of Wannstedt to join the coaches wronged by incompetent officiating, since, of course, this is not a mortal wound, but merely an additional one, as if the train has backed up and run over the body again.
And if either of these plays had been reversed and the Bears won, Green Bay would be screaming even louder and without the doomed whine that Wannstedt has by instinct and prospect.
“We were battling a lot of elements up here,” Wannstedt said.
Not the least of which is that Green Bay is the defending conference champion. Green Bay still thinks it will win the Super Bowl. The Bears can think whatever they want and not start the first argument.
To get anyone to pay attention, the Bears need to matter. And the Bears do not matter. So, replay or not, the calls go to the better team, kind of like a contender needing to knock out the champion to get his title, and the Bears are as far from contending as they are from Tierra del Fuego.
Still, losing 26-20 has the look of actual progress. To have a chance to win at the end is some sort of step back from the abyss that Bears football has settled into, there in the bottom muck of desperation, amid the mire of inadequacy. You know, where the Cincinnati Bengals live.
“Stats are for losers,” said Bears tackle Mike Wells.
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They sure are. The Bears scored six fewer points, gained 200 fewer yards and had the ball 10 fewer minutes. The only stats in the Bears’ favor were kickoff returns and interceptions for touchdowns. The Bears did not just lose this game, they cheated themselves out of it.
Someone asks me if this close call for Green Bay has saved Wannstedt’s job. I say, not if he has to take a math test.
Instant replay had nothing to do with Wannstedt passing up an extra point to go for two when it made absolutely no sense to do so. Wherever the chart of scores is that mandate a two-point conversion, nowhere on it is 13-9, the Bears’ temporary advantage at the time.
“I was ready to kick the point,” said Jeff Jaeger, taking no responsibility.
“Either way they need a touchdown,” Wannstedt explained, “so that’s why we went for two.”
That makes no more sense than a pilot saying that all the luggage was going to Reno so that’s why he landed the plane in Omaha.
Before I go any further with this second-guessing, let me say that I first-guessed it at the time. There are press box witnesses to that. And, more importantly, the very fact that an extra point is an issue in a Bears-Packers game is a significant breakthrough in the Packers-wax-Wannnstedt-again tradition.
If the Bears kick the point and Green Bay scores the presumed touchdown, the Bears can still take the lead with a field goal, which they cannot do if they miss the two-point conversion, which they did.
And here is how one dumb decision affects another. Later, trailing by 10, the Bears pass up a chance at a 48-yard field goal in order to fail on fourth-and-4. Wannstedt’s explanation is the ball was three yards short of his comfort zone for trying a field goal.
“You can’t argue with the call (Wannstedt) made,” Jaeger said. “I told him I could kick if the ball was at the 30 and it was at the 31. He’s got two seconds to decide. A 50-yarder out of a sand pit? In a dome, of course, you kick it.”
Was it three yards or was it one yard? There’s that math thing again.
If the kicker takes the coach off the hook, so would I usually, but now we come back to those last three plays–remember whomp, crunch and whack?–when Steve Stenstrom is buried under, in order, by Bill Lyon, Reggie White and Santana Dotson, trying to find enough time to get the ball into the end zone for a touchdown.
None of that would have been necessary if those four untaken points were there because the Bears could have won with a field goal.
I’m assuming they would have tried this one.