From The 'Who Needs The '85 Bears' Department: If you want to see a good defense, head to Vernon Hills High School. Their football team has not given up a single point this season, outscoring their opponents 290-0. Every other team in Illinois has given up at least 22 points. That's nothing short of astounding. Oh by the way, their offense is paced by wide receivers DaVaris Daniels (son of former Bear Phillip) and Evan Spencer (son of Bears running backs coach Tim).
Greg Olsen said after the win over Green Bay that it was often more difficult to come back from a good win than a bad loss. Well, he was right about the first part and now the Bears need to demonstrate the second.
Runaround
After the Giants piled 189 rushing yards on the Bears, any guess at what the game plan will be for Carolina with running backs DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart placing the Panthers fifth in rushing yardage?
It will not be a surprise to see Chester Taylor getting a far bigger share of the offense after a fourth straight game with Matt Forte failing to average 3.0 yards per carry. Taylor and Forte have identical averages of 2.8 yards per carry but Taylor at least has averaged three or more yards per carry in three of the four games.
Number-gaming
No team has given the ball away more than Carolina’s 13 times. Then again, no team was looser with the ball before last weekend than the New York Giants…
A hidden impact of the Cutler concussion on the offense is that it drove from the game the NFL’s No. 2 quarterback in fourth quarters (133.4 passer rating). Given that the Bears trailed just 10-0 going into Sunday’s fourth quarter and 10-3 until about 4 1/2 minutes to play, the Bears were without a player whose best work has been truly at crunch time.
Duly noted
If there’s a touch of amusement in the Mark Anderson business, it’s that Alex Brown, Julius Peppers and newly signed Charles Grant were all products of the 2002 draft…
From e-chat’er “Eddie” last night, can Julius Peppers play offense? Considering that he was athletic enough to play basketball at North Carolina, I wouldn’t bet against Peppers making everyone forget Chuck Bednarik.