Thumbs Down - Can the Bears Overcome Jay Cutler's Injury?

"I've learned that life is one crushing defeat after another, until you just wish Flanders was dead." - Homer Simpson

I certainly don't feel that way about life in general (and not just because, like hens love roosters and geese love ganders, I love Ned Flanders more than Homer Simpson loves a nacho hat).  But the first part of that sentence does a pretty good job of summarizing how I've felt watching my football teams this fall.  After a 6-0 start, the Illini may need to win their last game of the regular season at Minnesota to avoid being shut out of a bowl game.  The Bears had been doing a good job of covering up the stench emanating from Champaign by posting a five-game winning streak - and major props to you if you guessed that the Bears, who were sitting at 2-3 at the same time the Illini were 6-0, would reach seven wins before the Illini did.  However, as you've undoubtedly heard, the Bears suffered a crushing injury on Sunday, losing long snapper Patrick Mannelly to a torn ACL.  Oh - and there was also something about Jay Cutler breaking his thumb during the win over the Chargers.

Bears After the Bye - What to Expect in the Second "Half" of the Season

It's odd how things work out sometimes.  Four weeks ago, the Illini were undefeated, and it looked to me as if the Bears were on the fast track to mediocrity after a Monday night loss to Detroit dropped them to 2-3.  But since then, the Illini have lost three straight games, crushing any hope of New Year's Day football, while the Bears have a two-game winning streak and renewed playoff hopes.  When the Illini were up the Bears were down.  Now, the Bears are up, and the Illini are down.  You know who I am?  Even Steven!

With the Bears are coming out of the bye week at 4-3 (the same record they had at the bye week in 2010), the next two games will most likely determine which way the 2011 season breaks.  A win over the Eagles on Monday night would give the Bears the tiebreaker edge over three of their potential competitors (Eagles, Falcons, Bucs) for wild card spots.  While a loss at Philadelphia wouldn't be fatal to a Bears' playoff run, the next game, at home against the Lions (another potential wild card competitor), is the real key to the team's postseason chances.  If the Bears are swept by Detroit there's no way the Bears will catch the Lions, and the Bears would have no way to make the playoffs other than as the NFC's #6 seed.  But a Bears victory would go a long way toward helping them finish ahead of the Lions, especially since Detroit still has to play Green Bay twice.

With the almost-second half of the schedule about to get underway (it would be much cleaner if the bye week fell at the exact midpoint of the season, but what can you do about that?), I figure this is a good time to try to guess if the Bears will return to the postseason.  I originally had the Bears finishing at 8-8, but there's been a slight change in my forecast.  I'm assuming the Bears will follow last year's formula, in which after the bye week, Mike Martz "chose" to go with more conservative, run-oriented game plans instead of the pass-happy, let's-get-Jay-Cutler-killed game plans he prefers.  Based on that assumption, here's how I see things unfolding the rest of the way, game by game:

First Place! Woo-Hoo!

On a day where the Bears outgained the Lions 463 yards to 168 and knocked the Lions starting QB out of the game just before halftime, they still needed a technicality to beat the Lions 19-14. Bears' fans should be thankful that Matt Forte was there to provide some very powerful deodorant (the same goes for referee Gene Steratore). Otherwise, with the next three games being at Dallas, home against Green Bay, and at the Giants, we'd almost certainly be looking at an 0-4 start (not that 1-3 is anything to write home about).

Of course, this game shouldn't have been close, considering the yardage edge and the fact that the Lions played prevent offense for the entire second half with Matthew Stafford out of the game. Then again, the four Bears turnovers didn't help, nor did the 100 yards in penalties. And don't get me started on the Bears' decision to use the same goal-line playbook that Joe Paterno used in the 1979 Sugar Bowl. Seriously, they hire Mike Martz because he's some sort of offensive supergenius, and that's what they come up with - four runs up the middle on five plays from the one-yard line?

The good news is that Dallas appears to have a coaching staff that's just as stupid as ours, which gives us some hope. Wait, whom am I kidding? The Cowboys will probably be p***ed off about losing and take out their frustrations on the Bears. Whatever - I'm still going to enjoy looking down the standings at the Vikings while I can.