Tuesday’s two-minute drill …
If emotional Bears fans well up with tears along with Mike Brown at the thought of the popular safety suffering another season-ending injury, go ahead and let them flow. Brown deserves pity as much as he does respect.
But cry not for the Bears’ defense. It will survive losing two starters for the season in Brown and defensive tackle Dusty Dvoracek.
Nobody at Halas Hall likes it. But nobody was unprepared for this inevitability, either, especially with Brown.
In other words, anyone looking for an excuse why the Bears now can lower their Super Bowl expectations can keep looking. These losses hurt, but they did more damage to the heart and soul of the team than the core of the roster.
Even now, is there a better defense in the NFC?
Danieal Manning will step in for Brown as he did last season and actually provide more speed and athleticism that will help compensate for Brown’s savvy. He isn’t the blitzer or run supporter Brown is, but at this point of their respective careers, he covers more ground and breaks on the ball quicker. The addition of Adam Archuleta should help plug the holes against the run that showed up during Brown’s absence in 2006.
Expect a dropoff in awareness and big-play potential, but Manning at least gives the Bears a reliable player they can count on every Sunday. That counts for something in a league where injuries are an inevitable part of the game every team anticipates.
Lucky for the Bears they are so well-prepared.
People who say the Bears aren’t the same team without Brown, out of respect for the veteran, make a valid point. But Brown has missed 28 regular-season games since coach Lovie Smith arrived in 2004 — more than half the schedule — and the Bears’ defense has remained among the NFL’s elite. It knows how to play without Brown because that has been the rule and not the exception.
Who backs up Manning now might keep Smith and general manager Jerry Angelo up late, as well as renew questions about the curious trade of Chris Harris, but the Bears like the options rookie Kevin Payne gives them.
As for Dvoracek, remember that he was a luxury; a young player who developed quicker than expected and willed his way into the lineup. Dvoracek’s loss eventually will raise more questions about his durability than the Bears’ depth at defensive tackle.
Darwin Walker will slide into the position he was supposed to fill in the first place when the Bears traded for him last month. Walker, an eight-year veteran, cruised through the preseason, but Bears coaches noted that he was a different player in practice last week with the regular season looming. His active play against the Chargers confirmed that.
The apparent return of Tommie Harris to being Tommie Harris also quells concerns. If the Bears had any doubts about Harris, they wouldn’t have made free-agent signee Anthony Adams inactive for the Chargers game. This elevates Adams a notch. Antonio Garay, kept around on the practice squad because the team values his development, figures to move up too.
If another injury occurs down the road, maybe former Bear Ian Scott will be healed and on the market by then once the Eagles release him after he is healthy. Depending on how desperate the Bears become, Tank Johnson remains unsigned, and one Bears official over the weekend said he believed Johnson was informed his eight-game suspension started Sunday. …
Switching to offense, Devin Hester needs to play more. He touched the ball once. All preseason the Bears raved about the progress Hester had made in his transition to wide receiver, yet he only took one snap at wideout against the Chargers. Granted, the Chargers’ complex blitz package out of the 3-4 might have been a good reason to keep someone inexperienced at reading defenses off the field. But for an offense that desperately needed a big play, keeping Hester on the sideline was one of the oddest calls offensive coordinator Ron Turner made on a day that wasn’t one of his better ones. …
In this case, maybe the Bears really can blame the media for changing momentum in Sunday’s game. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, Chargers punter Mike Scifres claimed his 22-yard punt bounced off a wire of a TV camera cable that was hovering high above the field to get a different view for the Fox telecast. A team official confirmed that it did. The punt then fell short and hit oblivious Bears safety Brandon McGowan, the Chargers recovered on the Bears’ 29 and scored their first touchdown four plays later. … The Bears indirectly helped put Chargers rookie safety Eric Weddle in position to make his sack of Rex Grossman on a blitz in the second quarter. San Diego took Weddle with the 37th pick in last April’s NFL draft — a choice the Bears traded to the Chargers for their second-, third- and fifth-round picks and a third-round selection in 2008. …
Final San Diego snapshot: The Union-Tribune also reported that LaDainian Tomlinson was resting in bed at the team hotel Saturday night when his cell phone rang about 11 p.m. It was Tommie Harris, and he wasn’t reminiscing about the Nike commercial. Harris asked LT for tickets. “He [also] said, ‘Tell [Kris] Dielman to take it easy on me,'” Tomlinson said, referring to the Chargers’ left guard. “He said, ‘Man, I’m coming off an injury. Y’all got to take it easy on me.'” …
Another byproduct of Cedric Benson’s slow start could be a national media following the Bears this year more than ever will dredge up the cool reception Benson once got in the locker room. After Sunday’s game, Yahoo! Sports reported a conversation with an unnamed Bear in July that suggested Benson still has hard feelings for Brian Urlacher and Ricky Manning Jr. for their treatment of him. The same online report quoted an anonymous Chargers player saying of Benson: “We felt we could get in his head. It’s not like we were looking at Larry Johnson or anyone back there saying ‘let’s go.’ I talk to guys around the league. [Benson] took himself out of the Super Bowl. That’s letting down your team. I guess that’s what kind of guy he is. We knew that, and we played accordingly.”
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dhaugh@tribune.com
