That No. 89 for the Carolina Panthers is small, but not invisible. Steve Smith is the best receiver in football. The Panthers chose him over Muhsin Muhammad, so you would think the Bears would have paid more attention to him.
Just because Smith caught 14 passes in November and didn’t score didn’t mean he had forgotten where the end zone was. On Sunday, he owned it, catching 12 passes for 218 yards and two touchdowns the Bears neither could stop nor hope to match, failing 29-21.
Make somebody else beat you. Make Ricky Proehl beat you. Make Kris Mangum beat you. Make Nick Goings beat you. Make Keary Colbert or Drew Carter beat you.
Carolina quarterback Jake Delhomme was protecting a 16-14 lead late in the third quarter when he glanced to his left. There was Smith, almost all by himself.
“I saw No. 27 on him,” Delhomme said. “I hadn’t seen it all day because there’s not many times you get one-on-one.”
The Bears might not have been able to recognize No. 89, but Delhomme knew who No. 27 was, rookie cornerback Chris Thompson, playing because of injuries to others.
“I gave Steve a little signal,” Delhomme said. “I kind of knew I wanted to go that way. I tried to hold the safety in the middle of the field and [Smith] just runs right by him.”
It was Smith’s second touchdown catch and it gave Carolina a 23-14 lead. His first touchdown came on the game’s second play, against cornerback Charles Tillman.
“Steve has the option of doing a hitch or a takeoff,” Delhomme said. “The safety came down and Steve ran right by the cornerback. I threw it up and Steve did the rest. He’s a special player and he showed up again today.”
The Bears are hardly the first team to get undressed by the little 5-foot-9-inch, 189-pound giant.
“If you watch us play, Steve Smith is involved quite a bit,” coach John Fox said, without fear of revealing a secret.
Did the Bears do anything differently from their Nov. 20 game?
“Nothing whatsoever,” Fox said. “We only scored three points last time, so I didn’t expect them to do much different and they didn’t.”
Smith said he was able to read the Bears’ defenses like a bright scoreboard.
“When the corners are aggressive, I know they’re in zone. When they play off, I know they’re in man. I know how to read defenses,” Smith said.
Whether the Bears pressed or dropped, Delhomme hit Smith with quick screens or just waited until he ran past somebody.
On the first touchdown, when Tillman fell on the terrible turf, Smith said, “I had a one-track mind. I was not taking the hitch.”
On his leaping catch against Tillman to set up a 10-0 lead, Smith said, “I wanted it a little bit more than he did. All I know is if my mom is out there, I’ve got to catch it over her too.”
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On his mind-set going into this game, Smith said, “All I heard was they pointed out all the mistakes we made the last time.”
The Panthers’ defense paid more attention to Muhammad than the Bears paid to Smith.
The Bears obviously have a way to go. They have nobody like Smith. Nobody does. Give them time. It only has been recently that the Bears have recognized the need for employing a quarterback, and Rex Grossman’s last three quarters Sunday left a decent memory.
Soon, he will have company. Rookie receiver Mark Bradley’s early-season injury never looked more devastating that it did Sunday when Bernard Berrian looked like the answer until he got hurt and when the Bears tried everybody from special-teamer Eddie Berlin to defensive back Rashied Davis at receiver to complement Muhammad.
That was a great catch by linebacker Brian Urlacher, just about the Bears’ best of the day. Too bad he didn’t score.
The Panthers were talking about Urlacher’s leaping interception almost as much as they talked about Smith.
“That was a great play,” Delhomme said. “I had Nick Goings for a touchdown. When I threw it I thought touchdown all the way.”
It was Delhomme’s only interception in a performance that ran his playoff record to 5-1, with impressive victories at St. Louis and at Philadelphia during the Panthers’ 2003 Super Bowl run and at New York and at Chicago this year.
“Hey, I lost that game for us last time [here]. Two picks early and we’re down 10-0. It was the opposite of today,” Delhomme said.
Delhomme was sacked only once for eight yards this time as the Panthers parlayed the early lead into an advantage in the trenches.
“I got hit a few times. I just tried to get the ball out of my hands quick,” Delhomme said.
Normally, 21 points would be enough for the Bears to party long into the night. Now they must spend an off-season knowing that no matter how good they think they are on defense, they lost to all the top quarterbacks they played: Mark Brunell, Carson Palmer, Ben Roethlisberger and Delhomme.
The playoffs almost always become a game of pitch and catch and the teams that do it best prevail. The Seattle Seahawks did it better than the Washington Redskins after losing the league’s best running back, Shaun Alexander, to injury. The Denver Broncos did it better than the New England Patriots. Even the Pittsburgh Steelers did it better than the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday.
Nobody did it better than Jake Delhomme and Steve Smith.
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