Keep this one in the memory bank
>> Monday
It's today's column by Len Pasquerelli, which basically affirms the optimism of the drunkards in Bears jerseys on last night's local news.
Now here's where I contradict myself yet again. Though I'm usually critical of Chicago sports fans for crying poormouth all the time, I think in this instance they're behaving too optimistically. And I'm not trying to be irrationally pessimistic. I don't claim to get the cart with the one bad wheel any more regularly than the average grocery store customer. There are just a lot of good reasons not to expect a repeat of this season in aught-7.
1. It's like that song "Spinning Wheel" by Blood, Sweat, and Tears. You know--"What goes up must come down." Come on; it's the 45 all the kids are buying right now.
Anyway, that principle usually proves true in salary cap-era NFL. Being in the Super Bowl is kind of like being on the cover of SI. You got in the Super Bowl because your franchise is at a peak. And peaking by definition implies the start of a downturn. There's no SI cover curse, and by the same token, the post-Super Bowl hangover is overblown. Much of it is simply the NFL's natural cycle turnin' its turn.
So drop all your troubles by the riverside. Hop a painted pony on the spinning wheel ride that we call the NFL, Bears fans. After two straight division-winning seasons, chances are we'll see leaner days ahead.
2. Don't Super Bowl losers have a particularly horrendous season-after track record? I should really take the time to look this up, but I'm just gonna lazily throw the question out and let Zuch or statboy Mike answer it in the comments.
I guess I'm sorta disagreeing with what I said three paragraphs ago now. But if I'm not mistaken, haven't Super Bowl losers historically fallen off way more than players-as-robots performance trends should dictate? Sure, the past trend is no guarantee the Bears will suffer the same falloff, but forty years is a lot of data.
3. Old guys. Every team has them, and admittedly, the Bears don't have all that many. In fact, they have plenty of young impact players (like Rex Grossman who's still gonna be awesome, and yes, I'm being biased but he's still good so shut up). Mostly, I'm talking about the offensive line. They didn't pass protect very well this year, and none of them are all that young. Fred Miller and Ruben Brown are pretty old in fact.
Also, Thomas Jones is at that point in a running back's career when the persistent beatings slow a guy down considerably. Yeah, I hope he's like Curtis Martin and keeps it up into 30s, but that's rare and unlikely.
4. Devin Hester. I hope everyone enjoyed the exploits of the Windy City Flyer a.k.a. Anytime a.k.a. Hurricane Hes this year because that will no way happen again. That's 30 regular season points you can't at all count on for next year or any year thereafter. Guys like Hester (Dante Hall, Desmond Howard) tend to be one-year wonders--at least in terms of such palpable results. Eric Metcalf is the one modern exception I can come up with.
Maybe I should attempt some research before throwing out these generalizations, but I'll leave it up to you readers to tell me I'm an idiot. All I'm saying is that it's very unrealistic to expect Hester to perform nearly as well or for the return unit to stay in tact, let alone give Hester such good lanes.
5. Robbie "Vinnie's gonna resist the intentionally hokey pun this time" Gould will probably lose some shimmer. (Ha, I lied!) Keeping with the theme of "the special teams were unusually special," Robbie Gould was atypically awesome as well. Kickers are funny creatures. And while Gould could end up the next Gary/Morten Anderson/sen, he could also be the next Mike Vanderjagt.
Hey, sweet. I ran out of talking points at five, a nice round number. I'll pretend that was intentional. Anyway, I'm not predicing anything radical like the Bears finishing behind the Lions next year, but it's crazy biased for Bears fans to think this team is so much better than your average 9-7 team. Such is the way of the NFL, where a couple guys passing their primes or one big free agent loss (i.e. Lance Briggs) can pull a franchise to earth in a quick hurry.
Remember, Chicago--Someone's waiting just for you. The spinning wheel, spinning true. Chew on that.
[Carnival music] Doooo, d-do da-da doo doo, doooo da-da doo doo [brass riff, carnival music, fade out]
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6 comments:
Last Six Super Bowl losers:
Seahawks 9-7
Eagles 6-10
Panthers 7-9
Raiders 4-12
Rams 7-9
Giants 7-9
To take Nate's point even further, Super Bowl losers have failed to make the playoffs in 6 of the last 8 seasons. Only two (Tennessee 2000, Seattle 2006) have made the playoffs in that stretch, however, since that pronounced trend is recent, and the playoffs have been expanded over the course of the Super Bowl, perhaps record the following season is a better indicator. I'm going to use 10 wins as a benchmark.
With that bar set, the Super Bowl loser has won 10 games or more the next season 16 out of 29 times since going to a 16-game schedule in 1978. It is worth pointing out though that the 1982 Cincinnati Bengals went 7-2 in a strike-shortened season.
In that 29-year span, the prior season's Super Bowl loser has won their division 14 times, but only once since going to an eight-division format in 2002(Seattle 2006).
Another thing to take into consideration, and perhaps most importantly is the changing finances of the NFL. All but four of these divisional titles won by Super Bowl losers occured BEFORE the NFL introduced a salary cap in 1994 (Pittsburgh 1996, New England 1997, Tennessee 2000, and Seattle 2006).
But perhaps most startlingly, only two Super Bowl losers in the 40 year history of the game (Dallas 1971 and Miami 1972) have won the Super Bowl the year following a Super Bowl loss.
Seahawks fans now realize the value of having a healthy team. We would have killed to only have 2 defensive injuries...
The bears were relatively healthy this year (Harris and Brown being the only notable exceptions.) It is so difficult to stay healthy in the NFL, and being healthy and deep are the keys to winning.
(And having a qb that doesn't suck ass, but y'all think your defense will make up for it-- good luck with that.)
optimistically
Point taken, T Dawg, but this...
[quote]The bears were relatively healthy this year (Harris and Brown being the only notable exceptions.) [/quote]
...is a bit of an understatement. While the Seahawks suffered more than their share of injuries this year, the Bears lost two PRO BOWLERS off their defense. For the remainder of the season. One who was the key to the run defense, stuffing gaps and drawing double-teams, and another who was the failsafe in the secondary, a slightly bigger and slightly stronger version of Bob Sanders.
Losing either one would be a huge blow to any team. Losing both should have been a catastrophic blow, and the losses certainly helped keep the Bears from raising the Lombardi trophy on Sunday.
The Bears didn't have the volume of injuries this year that SEA did (but the Bears are due for a few healthy seasons, IMO, after the M*A*S*H unit years of '02 and '04), but they had injuries to mission-critical performers.
As for the snark on Rex, fine. Yuck it up. But Hasselbeck's a veteran. What's his excuse for still throwing the brain-cramp INTs, like he did at Soldier Field this year?
This post has now been copy-edited by yours truly.
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