Lull / roar is in Bears' playbook
7-game streak after preseason suggests they're on verge of surge
It was Dallas, but it took a bit of research to find out. Nobody cares who did well in the preseason, just as it doesn't matter -- other than positioning for the playoffs -- who did well in the regular season.
It's a whole new year for the Bears come Sunday against the Seattle Seahawks, both literally and figuratively. Long forgotten are the Bears' problems on offense months ago during their exhibition schedule. They were running vanilla plays at that point, knowing that they opened the regular season with three straight division opponents -- teams they would face twice during the season. The cards were played close to the vest, but that seemed like an excuse rather than a viable plan. Anxiety ran high among fans and media types. Yet the Bears answered the bell when the season started, going 7-0.
(Al Podgorski/Sun-Times)
The final few games of the regular season were like preseason games for the Bears, and their performances indicated as much. Tampa Bay pushed them to overtime, Detroit gave them all they could handle, and Green Bay embarrassed them on New Year's Eve.
Will playoff time bring a significant rise in performance like the start of the regular season did?
''You won't hear us talk about that,'' Smith said, before grudgingly conceding the goal at the end of the season was to ''put the best team on the field'' for the playoffs.
''When you know you are going to play later on, why would you show anything?''
Smith went to the Indianapolis-Kansas City game last weekend and watched a Colts defense that was bad against the run during the regular season shut down the Chiefs' Larry Johnson when it mattered most.
''Look what they did,'' Smith said. ''They put the regular season behind them. It's a new year. We're starting over, too.''
Tight end Desmond Clark called the transition from preseason to regular season the best analogy for what it's like to get to the playoffs -- especially for a team that dominated early like the Bears did and couldn't really help their situation late because they'd already wrapped things up.
''You go through all that preseason kind of yawning to get to the regular season, and we were kind of sitting back yawning at the end of the regular season trying to get to the postseason,'' Clark said.
What remains to be seen is whether the Bears can shake off any ill effects from their extended hibernation and recapture the momentum they had earlier in the year. The preseason analogy was used another way by defensive end Alex Brown, who said the speed of the game -- along with the intensity and the importance -- rises exponentially from preseason to regular season to each round of the playoffs.
''It speeds up -- it's different because you are playing better teams,'' Brown said.
The system is designed to reward the teams that played best in the regular season. Seattle won at home against Dallas but, facing elimination, had to show its hand in terms of strengths and weaknesses. The Bears got a chance to study how the Seahawks protected their secondary and determine what plays are their best. They also have the benefit of seeing how another coaching staff opted to attack and defend against Seattle.
The Seahawks had a mentally and physically draining game against the Cowboys and now must cross the country to play in a hostile environment against an opponent with a significantly better record -- an opponent that dominated them in all phases in their first meeting Oct. 1.
The formula is fraught with disaster for the Seahawks, but they'll be heartened by the Bears' track record of having lost both of their playoff games in the last five years while playing at home after a bye week. Things don't always play to form.
The idea in any sport is to peak at the right time, but perhaps a long layoff takes more of a toll on a team that needs to be in a frenzied lather to succeed. Home-field advantage held up in the wild-card round, but it's been shaky in the past. Pittsburgh won three road games before beating Seattle in the Super Bowl last year.
''The last game we really had to win was the Carolina game last year,'' Bears defensive end Adewale Ogunleye said. ''We have been waiting for this time for a whole year. We're here. We worked hard all year, and we're looking forward to Seattle coming up on Sunday.''
Smith seems to believe the Bears' earlier trend will repeat itself.
''I am anxious to see,'' he said. ''What we did when we went from the preseason and came out strong in the Green Bay game -- we had a little break, same schedule and came out strong. I think we're going to get the same thing from our ballclub now. I am anxious to see the next step we're going to take.''