Bernstein: Bears Overcome Both Chargers, Themselves
By Dan Bernstein--
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) In an epic, nationally televised battle of mediocre teams with annoying quarterbacks, the Chicago Bears outlasted the San Diego Chargers to win 22-19 on Monday night, accomplishing little of consequence outside of being mildly entertaining for a while, then exciting for a few minutes.
It looked early on like the offense was determined to leave as many points on the field as possible against a Chargers team eventually missing approximately half of its starters, with stupid penalties by offensive linemen Matt Slauson and Kyle Long ruining scoring chances and one by defensive lineman Jarvis Jenkins continuing another, Robbie Gould missing two field goals, a bizarre coaching decision and Alshon Jeffery dropping both a touchdown pass and one that would have extended a drive on third down.
Jay Cutler was regressing to old form by not protecting the ball on a sack and then miscommunicating with Jeffery on a pass that resulted in a Jason Verrett pick returned for a score.
At the end of the first half, Bears coach John Fox called a timeout just to set up coordinator Vic Fangio's patented goal-line prevent defense, apparently unconcerned that it bailed the Chargers out with the play clock about to expire and improve the field goal chances for a shaky kicker who had just missed an extra point. The Bears (3-5) were down 16-7 shortly thereafter.
That's how Fox slow-walks the AFC West, apparently, which he owns this year -- at least until Denver comes to town in two weeks and eats everybody's face.
For a night, though, his team was able to flip the script.
Cutler didn't merely settle in but feasted – helping Jeffery redeem himself along the way with a blistering second half of back-foot balloons, precise sideline shots and audibles to bubble screens. Jeffery would tie a franchise record with his third straight game of 100-plus receiving yards, finishing with 151 on 10 catches, helping his quarterback rewrite himself with a 100.5 rating on 27-of-40 passing for 345 yards and two touchdowns and the one interception.
There was special work by rookie running back Jeremy Langford, too, who showed excellent hands on a diving catch, some instinctive run vision, pull-away speed to the edge and responsible blocking in pass protection. Langford's 142 total yards, a touchdown and a key two-point conversion made for some positive check-marks on his early scouting report as we consider the post-Matt-Forte future. The same goes for burgeoning safety Adrian Amos, who's looking like a draft steal.
Lamarr Houston all but sealed the game himself, just as some of us were readying bitterly for the inevitable breakdown in the Bears' secondary and inexplicable clock-management to doom them yet again. When the opponent is missing the starting left tackle and left guard and the right tackle is playing hurt, that eventually is supposed to matter, and it did, finally, because Houston's motor was running hot late and Eddie Goldman kept bulling away inside all night.
And Houston didn't maim himself celebrating this time.
Neither one of these teams is winning anything this year, but a gummy primetime mess turned into a few minutes of representative NFL football that ended up to be compelling, and it gave optimistic Bears fans reason to believe that some people on that field could matter at the same time their team does.
Good enough.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. You can follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.
