Harris' punch KO's own team
It's one thing to lose a game. It's another thing to lose your dignity.
The Bears lost both Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals.
On a bizarrely -- deceptively -- gorgeous day, defensive tackle Tommie Harris acted the warm-weather fool and was thrown out of Soldier Field after only four plays. Two minutes. Less, actually.
The strange guy took a $6.67 million roster bonus from rapidly fading general manager Jerry Angelo last March, and now he's either: a) lazy; b) injured; c) deluded; d) deeply troubled. Or any combination of the above.
No. 91 led the journey into the deep mud.
I'm thinking Harris needs a shrink as much as he needs knee rehab.
But quarterback Jay Cutler getting flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct in the third quarter for whining at the officials like he was Rasheed Wallace and this was the old NBA? -- that was more dirt.
Consecutive false-start penalties?
Arizona going 8-for-8 on third-down conversions into the third quarter?
Great Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald looking even better than he is?
A field-goal attempt nearly turning into a touchdown going the other way?
The no-run, Kurt Warner-is-old Cardinals gaining 438 yards of offense, 182 on the ground, in this 41-21 shame-fest?
All of it is bad and sad.
But let's go to the top.
That's where it starts, right?
Indeed, if you don't believe in the management pyramid, the flow chart from top to bottom, the food chain of edibility descending from shark to guppy, then you probably think Goldman Sachs is a charitable outfit run by millions of 401(k) investors who have lost everything.
The men at the top -- president Ted Phillips, the aforementioned Angelo and placid-till-death coach Lovie Smith -- they're the enablers, the ones who allowed this travesty to happen. While we're at it, let's throw alleged savior/new defensive line coach Rod Marinelli onto the pyre. Harris is one of your guys, Rod, and he does this?
Yeah, and the McCaskey ownership, too. There were 63,309 fired-up Bears fans who paid money to see a road team travel from the desert and humiliate the spawn of George Halas. Refunds?
To have the cornerstone of your defensive line removed from competition suddenly and without warning would screw up any system, any game plan. But do you quit? Do you whine? Do you stop coaching?
Where is the freaking leadership on this team, this franchise?
No answer needed.
Oh, what we would give to see a blackboard smashed, a wall punched through (no broken bones, please), a coach who showed the spark of genius, of in-conflict management skills, of justifiable -- yea, beneficial -- rage!
Lovie Smith cannot be what he is not. And calm is generally commendable. Tom Landry was calm. Bill Walsh was calm. Tony Dungy was calm.
But someone must not be calm. A lieutenant, a bean counter, a bathroom-stall cleaner. Someone in the organization who has earned respect and can cut players' legs off when necessary.
When Lovie said of Harris, ''He punched a guy; he got kicked out of the game. That's that,'' you knew nothing had changed.
Yes, Harris was rolled on top of and nastily roughed up by 338-pound offensive tackle Deuce Lutui on a run by Tim Hightower. But to retaliate while kneeling over Lutui and slugging him in the head with a full-tilt, I-must-destroy-you upper cut? In front of the refs, fans, a national TV audience?
It bordered on insanity.
I could be wrong about this, but I don't believe I've ever seen, or heard of, an alleged superstar getting thrown out of a game for so vicious a loss of control in such a short time.
On the sideline, Harris, seeking empathy, pantomimed to coaches how Lutui had kneed him, raising his own right knee a couple of times in frustration to demonstrate what had been done to him. Lutui likely is a dirty player. I'm sure the massive load from USC knew he could get into Harris' head.
But this is what the huge, cruel men in the trenches do. Retaliate for dirty play? You'd never make it two plays into an NFL game.
The tone Harris set effectively destroyed the Bears.
Cutler actually had a stellar game -- 369 yards passing, three touchdowns, one interception -- but he's like a plant without a guard fence around him.
If things don't change, he will soon break.
''It's not where we want to be, but it could be worse,'' Cutler said of the Bears' situation.
Right now it's hard to think of how.