Congratulations to the Colts and their fans !!! Your first major league world championship in any sport is now a reality. You deserved to win the Super Bowl on Sunday and have persevered many years to get to this point. The Colts are NFL Super Bowl Champions … now carry the trophy with dignity and try to act like you’ve been there before (even though you haven’t been there before).
To the Bears: very nice season, but you were totally outclassed by the Colts in just about every facet of the game. Although the game set up nicely in the early going for the Bears with the kickoff return and an 8 point lead midway through the 2nd quarter, didn’t we all kind of feel that the Colts would eventually overtake the Bears? And of course they did rather easily. The Bears were out-coached, out-hustled, out-played, out-blocked out-tackled, out-scored. They Bears were simply “outed” from this game and beaten by a better team. The Colts proved to be the tougher team on Sunday, too, despite a reputation for being soft. And I believe that’s why they won.
Peyton Manning proved to be a huge difference, although it wasn’t just him. Indy played great as an entire unit starting early in the second quarter and really manhandled the Bears, although the score was much closer than the stats would indicate until the 4th. It seemed as though the Bears played very conservatively on offense, and this would eventually haunt them. Defensively, they never recovered from being burnt on their first blitz, so they never blitzed again and Manning picked them apart with short passes. The Bears should have blitzed more … they never touched Manning and he was free to do as he pleased. So what if you got burnt on the first one … does that mean you totally abandon the game plan??? I thought the Bears played “not to lose”, very conservatively, and this contributed greatly to the loss. It’s like they were waiting for the rain to help cause a Colts fumble deep in Colts territory, but it never happened.
Lastly, Rex Grossman lost his composure in the second half, which was certainly a fear of Bears fans going in. First there were the fumbled snaps in the 3rd quarter and the absolutely fatal INT in the fourth. On the INT, what exactly was that???? It’s second and one on about the 45 … a down where you go for a long-gainer … and he throws a half-hearted wounded duck right to the Colts defender. After the pump fake, wasn’t that supposed to be thrown about 20-30 more yards downfield to a streaking WR??? Talk about essentially giving the game away on one play … that was it. You just can’t make crap plays like that in a Super Bowl. Now the Bears need to wonder if they can go the distance with Rex. Maybe this was a learning experience for a young team who will come back smarter and more resolute next year. Or maybe they’ll just turn into the recent version of the Seattle Seahawks. Anyway, I’m disappointed as a Bears fan that we didn’t play more competitively … forget about not winning … but could we at least have mounted 250 yards of total offense and maybe 12 first downs???? Is that asking too much??? This wasn’t just Rex though … it was a total team loss. Coaching and strategy were very shakey, the defense and just plain tackling were quite subpar, and of course the offense did very little after the first quarter. But give credit to the Colts. They were the superior team by far on Sunday. They should challenge for the crown again next season. Way to go Peyton Manning!!!
Bears fans … get over it … we were lucky to be playing in the game Sunday … very lucky. Pitchers and catchers report for spring training in a couple weeks …. and March Madness will be here before we know it. Have a great week.
Wally
It seems logical to wonder why the Bears didn’t blitz more, but it seemed like the Colts did a great job of reacting to their over-pursuit. It seemed like every other play Rhodes or Addai busted a run for six or seven yards (didn’t the Colts used to have another back? What was his name? That’s right he’s sunning himself in Arizona)while a Bear defensive lineman was left standing in the backfield.
If the Colts weren’t running, Addai was catching. 10 catches? So much for my prediction about Marvin. How does Addai NOT get the MVP? I know, I know if Peyton played even close to good he was going to get the award.
Wayne’s touchdown did not bode well for the Bears. If he were any more open, he would have been…well…uh…a 7-Eleven. I know the Bears were up at the time, but putting pressure like that on Rex was a recipe for disaster.
Losing Benson obviously hurt. One less weapon the Colts D had to concern itself with.
Wally, good call on Hester and the Scarlet Letter return. I’ll take props for the Sanders call. Mike and I called Peyton the MVP. Of course that was so easy even a cave man could have made that call.
Lastly cheers to the General Manager, Bill Polian. Polian constructed the Buffalo Bills teams of the early 90’s that made it to four consecutive Bowls. A disagreement with Ralph Wilson left Polian without a job, and after a brief stop in Carolina, James Irsay got himself a great exec.
Almost forgot – Mom-in-law came over to watch the game. She was born and raised in Chi-town. She promised, considering the better half’s recent interest in the Colts and Peyton (I haven’t seen this much interest in the NFL from her since Joe Montana retired), that she didn’t care who won the game. That lasted until the opening kickoff when she screamed at the top of her lungs: GO BABY!!!
The better half responded: “Keep this up and you’ll be going home at halftime.”
I had to separate the factions several times during the contest by reminding them: “Hey, we’re here to enjoy the game.”
Wally, Mom has taken to the ‘death chair’. For those of us not in the know Wally gave this name to a chair in our family room because it renders its victims incapable of moving and brings on a death-like sleep. After an ND game last fall Mom fell asleep in the reclined position of the chair. Upon waking she grabbed the handle on the side of the chair to return it to the inclined position. Once there she leaned forward and accidentally rocked ever so slightly and the chair sprung back to the reclined position. After a moment of awkward silence because I wasn’t sure how she’d respond, she kinda chuckled and said: “Guess it doesn’t want me to leave.”
Since then even Mom has taken to calling it the ‘death chair’.
Better keep checking on mom frequently, so it doesn’t become her actual death chair 🙂
I’m still ticked at the Bears for dropping the ball in this one (figuratively, we all know they did it literally). That was a winnable game … not only were the Bears winning by 8 early on, but it was only a 5 point deficit early in the 4th. I guess that’s where having a top quartile QB comes in handy, as opposed to the mediocre Rex Grossman. There’s nothing worse than throwing an INT that gets returned for a TD, especially at that juncture of the game. It’s the worst possible screw-up he could’ve made.
It was a bit of a knee jerk reaction to be disgusted with the Bears defense as well, especially given the shoddy tackling. BUT, if you take a step back and realize that they allowed Indy only 22 points in total and only 6 in the second half, that’s a pretty good job. If you’d have offered me the proposition that the Colts score only 22 points on offense, I’d have taken that before the game, but of course the risk to that is “how many points will Rex give up himself?” and that’s what came back to bite ’em.
The entire Bears team could’ve played better yesterday, but if you need to fix one thing to make a huge difference, it would obviously be QB play. Either Grossman has to improve, or they need to find someone better. Is it Griese? Is it a free agaent (Garcia)? Don’t know.
Either way, the Bears have a pretty good core group here that is capable of returning to the Super Bowl … and maybe winning it if they improve QB performance. I know things change quickly in today’s NFL and God knows injuries can wipe out a season, but the Bears are still advantaged right now by being in a division with Detroit, Minn and Green Bay. Maybe they should try to draft a QB in the first round … and maybe they should trade up to get a better draft choice?
When the Bears got the ball down 5, and the camera focused in on Manning with his head in his hands, I thought we were in for an amazing ending. Unfortunately it didn’t happen.
Wally answer me this – if I told you in preseason that the Bears would make it to the Super Bowl, would you be happy?
Time for Texas – Texas A&M.
Yes, absolutely. The Bears have been to only 2 Super Bowls in my lifetime now, so how can I not be happy with the season? I honestly didn’t think they’d make it to the SB this year even after getting the #1 seed in NFC, so again a pleasant surprise. We lost the game … it was a winnable game … and it’s very disappointing to get that close and not finish the job … as Buffalo Bills fans know all too well 🙂
As an organization, the Bears have been haunted by having sub-standard QBs on the roster, except for McMahon for only like 2-3 healthy seasons in the mid 80’s. I believe that unless the rest of your team is absolutely awesome (e.g. Raven’s defense 5 years ago), then your QB needs to be in the “Top 3rd” of the league in order to win it all. The QB position is too important.
Nice to see Texas A&M emerge as a front-runner in college hoops. Being near Houston with all that talent, there’s no way they should be a doormat every year. Hopefully, this is a permanent change in the right direction for them.