Emotional Rex-cue

By Mike Maguire | Nov 12, 7:54 PM

What can I say… I'm a sucker for happy endings.

Our Chicago Bears sure orchestrated a happy ending in their 17-6 victory over the Raiders on Sunday, perhaps an ending compelling enough to force the casual Bears fan to check out next Sunday's edition and see where this story goes. Had the Bears finished their game against the Raiders the way they started it, it's safe to say that the book on the 2007 Chicago Bears would've been closed.

The truth of the matter is that Sunday's Rex Grossman led fairly tale ending in Oakland helped erase 57 minutes worth of a boring horror story against one of the worst teams in football. The Bears failed to exploit a soft run defense and again waited until the last minute to connect on the long ball. The defense looked solid (Adewale Ogunleye spent the afternoon in the Raiders backfield and all of the Bears linebackers handled their business), but how encouraging is it to shut down a team that would have trouble scoring against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish? The Bears victory over the Raiders on Sunday may have saved the season for now (and possibly Rex Grossman's career), but the areas of concern remain painfully obvious. When you take off the Blue and Orange colored sunglasses handed out late Sunday afternoon, you have to wonder how a Bears team that can't run the ball plans to get it done during this playoff push.

The bottom line, good news is that at 4-5, the Chicago Bears are very much alive in the wildcard hunt in the NFC. Four other NFC wildcard hopefuls lost on Sunday (The Lions, Panthers, Saints, & Skins) and (mathematically) the Bears are still right there in the mix.

The bad news is that the Bears are not going to beat a lot of teams besides the Raiders if they play as poorly offensively as they did for the majority of the game on Sunday. The book on the '07 Bears may not have been slammed shut on Sunday, but considering the way they played against a Raiders team that has now lost 56 of it's last 73 football games… an underlying message of doom and gloom remains plastered all over the walls of Halas Hall.

mike_m@chitowndailynews.org