Chicago Sun Times Editorial - Bears come through — now it’s on to Miami

Chicago Sun Times Editorial - Bears come through — now it’s on to Miami
Copyright by The Chicago Sun Times
January 22, 2007




What, "D" worry? Down the stretch of this compelling football season, the vaunted Bears defense was looking mighty mortal, weakened by key injuries. And during Sunday's NFL Championship Game, it slipped up for a while, allowing the New Orleans Saints to make things close after stuffing them for most of the first half. But in the end, Brian Urlacher and company came through again, resoundingly, and with the help of a few stunning plays by the "O," the oft-questioned Bears are heading to the Super Bowl.

With its roaring symphony of sacks, fumble-causing hits, interceptions and other manifestations of smash-mouth Bears football, the team had the ghost of Papa Bear George Halas — not to mention his daughter, team owner Virginia McCaskey — grinning from ear to ear. Lovie Smith became the first black NFL coach to make it to the Super Bowl.

Only the psychiatry profession, which was itching to get its hands on Rex Grossman after another confoundingly bad spurt of play by the Bears quarterback, was disappointed.

Even in defeat, Saints fans could find solace in the team's making it this far after the ills that befell it in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Much was made of the Saints, 3-13 a season ago, being fated to win this year, carrying as they did the hopes of a city still crawling through the wreckage of the disaster. And if the Bears were going to lose to anyone, these emissaries from the Crescent City would have been the most acceptable winner. Chicago has deep, long-standing ties to New Orleans, going back to the days that brought Louis Armstrong up the river to the Windy City.

But as much as the people along the Gulf Coast deserved the taste of victory, having suffered so many varieties of loss, the outcome of this game actually mattered little compared with the performance of the hometown team known as New Orleans city government. After all these months under the flawed leadership of Mayor Ray Nagin, it still hasn't delivered a workable recovery plan, and the State of Louisiana hasn't distinguished itself in this department, either.

The kind of suffering Bears fans have endured in recent years can't compare with what so many people in New Orleans are still going through. But that doesn't diminish the joy that emanated from Soldier Field on Sunday evening. Even in crushing the Saints, this Bears team was not as monstrous as the ferocious, Super Bowl Shuffling squad of '85. But in standing up to skeptics, its own doubts and distractions and the pressure legendary franchises bring down on each generation, the Bears, like Chicago, proved their can-do mettle. On to Miami!