Well, that really wasn't pretty. For the second week in a row the Bears got themselves a very ugly win. This time against the Minnesota Vikings, a team that made the playoffs last season, but was not expected to be anywhere close to as good as the Bengals are expected to be. However, the weather was very sloppy, and that surely played a part in it, but both teams had to play in that sloppy weather....and the Vikings were a little sloppy as well. Not as sloppy as the Bears, but still sloppy.
In the first half the Bears were clearly the better team. The offense was getting down the field to a point, and even got a touchdown on their first drive after a big Hester return, but prior to that the opening kickoff was taken by Cordarrelle Patterson back for a Vikings touchdown. The next Vikings touchdown came when Jay Cutler was sacked and had the ball knocked out by Jared Allen.
The Vikings were almost scoring like some recent Bears teams have, getting their points from anywhere other than their offense, the offense only scoring when given great field position. However, the Bears were helping the Vikings to stay right there. In the second half it was a little more even as far as the play between the two teams, but the Vikings were able to grab the lead. In the end, the Bears were able to get down the field for a final touchdown to win 31-30, but it should not have been that close.
At the end of the first half the Bears should have been up big, but due to their silly mistakes, the Vikings were right in the game. However, a win is a win, and you need to take them when you get them. The Bears are going to Pittsburgh, and while the Steelers are not the Steelers from a few years ago, they're still a team that will make the Bears pay if the Bears make those same mistakes.
Back to this game though. Jay Cutler threw a couple of interceptions. One was tipped at the line of scrimmage and then tipped a couple more times before being intercepted in the end zone by the Vikings, costing the Bears at least a field goal, quite possibly a touchdown. The other one was on a play where it looked like Cutler didn't see the defender that wound up getting the interception, and just straight out threw a bad ball. Outside of those two passes Cutler was 28/37 for 290 yards and 3 touchdowns. Overall it was actually a very good game considering the conditions they were playing in. Matt Forte was a very good weapon throughout the game, getting 161 all purpose yards, 71 receiving on 11 catches and 90 rushing on 19 attempts.
Other good offensive performances were by Brandon Marshall, who had 7 catches for 113 yards and a touchdown, and Martellus Bennett, who had 7 catches for 76 yards and 2 touchdowns.
On defense, the pass rush was still not very good. Corey Wootton did have one sack, but nobody else got a sack. However, the Bears still did a very good job on Adrian Peterson, holding the league's best running back to under 4 yards per carry (26 runs for 100 yards). If you take out Peterson's best rush (36 yards), he has 25 runs for 64 yards, less than 3 yards per carry. They held Christian Ponder to barely over a 50% completion percentage (16/30).
The bottom line is that they didn't really make a lot of big plays, outside of a Tim Jennings pick-6 of course, but they still got the job done of holding the Vikings back. Remember that a lot of the Vikings points came on special teams or defense, and they were given good field position many times. Given the circumstances, the defense did very well.
The player for the game for the Bears may have been Devin Hester. Him or Martellus Bennett (who made another great catch on what would have been a touchdown if he wasn't completely out of bounds, one handed, about 10 feet in the air). The Vikings had a lot of momentum after Patterson's opening kickoff return, and Hester took it right back, nearly scoring a touchdown himself, but still getting the ball something like 75 yards down the field, which led to a Bears touchdown. Hester didn't stop there, he also had an 80 yard return later in the game, and for the game averaged 49 yards on his five returns.
All in all, it wasn't pretty, but there were some good things to look at, and the bottom line is that the Bears got the win. I remember a large portion of the 90's when the Bears just keeping it close to a team that made the playoffs the previous year was something to be happy about, and now it's good to know that it's bittersweet if they don't have a decisive win against a team that made the playoffs the previous year. If the Bears can clean some of their play up, they can be a very good team, and they're on the right path, but they're not there yet. On to Pittsburgh, and let's see if they can figure it out there.
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