The Bears are defying convention, a good thing if they expect to keep winning low-scoring games in the playoffs.
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They have scored 20 points only three times. In the playoffs, it is rare to win a game while scoring fewer than 20.
Over the last five postseasons–55 playoff games including Super Bowls–only four games were won by teams scoring fewer than 20 points. The 2000 Baltimore Ravens, the defensive team compared to this season’s Bears, won one of them, the AFC title game against Oakland 16-3. In their three other wins that postseason, the Ravens scored 21, 24 and 34 points.
The last Super Bowl won by a team with fewer than 20 points was after the 1974 season, 16-6 by the Pittsburgh Steelers over the Minnesota Vikings, two great defenses that flourished before rules changes started to outlaw them.
Bears coach Lovie Smith was an assistant at Tampa Bay when the Bucs lost the 1999 NFC title game to St. Louis 11-6. Pittsburgh coach Bill Cowher beat New England in a 1997 divisional playoff 7-6. So this week’s matchup between the Steelers, last season’s No. 1 defense, and Bears, this season’s No. 1, is a throwback.
The Steelers are averaging 22.8 points a game, the Bears 16.8. Those numbers include defensive touchdowns and return touchdowns. The Steelers have scored two, the Bears five. On defense, the Steelers are giving up 18.8 points, the Bears 10.6.
Last season the Steelers beat the New York Jets 20-17 in overtime in their first playoff game before losing 41-27 to New England in the AFC title game.
Over the last 10 postseasons–110 playoff games–the winning teams have averaged 29 points a game. The effect of rules against the defense is reflected in playoff scores. In the five years between 1995 and 1999, there were eight playoff games won with fewer than 20 points, twice as many as were won in the last five years.
Steelers in trouble
With their third loss in a row Sunday, the Steelers are currently eighth in line for the six AFC playoff spots and can’t afford another loss. Three of their four remaining games are against NFC North teams, the Bears, Vikings and Lions. But the Bears and Vikings are no longer losers and the NFC North is no longer the worst division in the league.
The Bears will have extra fans in Cincinnati this week. If the Bears beat the Steelers and the Bengals beat Cleveland, the Bengals clinch the AFC North title.
Hungry receiver
Arizona Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald is learning how to cook.
“Too much takeout,” he said.
Every Wednesday evening, he takes a cooking lesson. He hired a cooking teacher, Linda Hopkins, who owns a cooking school in Scottsdale, Ariz.
“Both my parents worked, and so both cooked,” he said. “I can remember coming home from football practice hungry and being so happy to walk into the kitchen and smell dinner.
“I wanted to be able to answer my kids one day when they ask me what’s for dinner. I know that in many ways this life in football is unreal, and that when I return to the life I left behind, in that world, I will need to get dinner on the table.”
Fitzgerald’s grandparents own Fitzee’s barbecue restaurant in Chicago.
Lion in the weeds
According to the Detroit Free Press, the name of a fan toting two “Fire Millen” signs at Sunday’s Lions-Vikings game was Aaron Tobin, 44. He is no relation to the former Bears and Lions personnel chief Bill Tobin, fired by Lions President Matt Millen two years ago.
After security guards confiscated the signs, following stadium protocol against any signage, other fans started pulling out markers and writing “Fire Millen” on whatever they could find, including brown bags and pizza boxes. They also wrote: “We Want Wayne Fontes,” the coach from 1988-96, and “Hire Dumars,” requesting Detroit Pistons President Joe Dumars.
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