It was football as low-budget reality show, a guilty pleasure, a sugar buzz.
If you like defense, the Bears’ 48-41 victory over the Vikings mortified you. If you like offense, this game had its way with your funny bone.
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Either way, as Sunday’s shootout developed, you couldn’t help but take a kid’s attitude: If it’s going to snow, let it come down so hard that the schools declare a snow day.
“Mike Brown came into the locker room after the game, and the first thing he said was, ‘All we needed was 48,'” tight end Desmond Clark said, laughing.
What a silly, fun, exhausting game this was. If you blinked, you likely missed a blocked punt. If you turned away, you probably missed a muffed punt. If you blinked and turned away at the same time, well, you were better at multitasking than the Vikings, who couldn’t seem to think and play special teams at the same time.
Bears coach Lovie Smith called it a “track meet.” Bears tight end Greg Olsen called it “carefree.” Defensive purists called it a day after two quarters.
The halftime score was 27-24 Bears. How that came to be is a matter of opinion. Afterward, the Bears and the Vikings were pushing the dominant-offense, force-of-nature angle. And there was some of that. You pit Kyle Orton against Gus Frerotte, and what do you expect besides a hurricane lining up against a cyclone?
Sarcasm aside, Frerotte benefited from the absence of injured Bears defensive backs Nathan Vasher, Charles Tillman and Danieal Manning. And Orton? He just happened to be very good on a crazy day on which anything was possible.
Anything.
How about, on one play, a fumbled snap by the Vikings’ punter, a blocked punt, an illegally kicked ball by a now-frantic punter and a return for a touchdown by the Bears’ Garrett Wolfe? Doable.
How about a punt hitting an oblivious Charles Gordon of Minnesota as he tries to block the Bears’ Zackary Bowman, who recovers the ball in the end zone for a touchdown? Check.
How about a 35-yard Orton-to-Clark completion that Clark fumbles at the Vikings’ 1 and the Bears’ Rashied Davis recovers in the end zone? Child’s play.
Would you believe a 99-yard kickoff return by a three-legged Bulgarian? OK, that didn’t happen. But was it really so far out of the realm of possibility?
Marty Booker is 32. He wasn’t the fastest guy when he entered the NFL 10 years ago. But he looked like Usain Bolt while scoring on a 51-yard touchdown play in the third quarter.
“I wasn’t going to be denied,” said Booker, who had dropped two touchdown passes earlier in the game.
On the very next series, Bears safety Kevin Payne picked off a Frerotte pass and returned it 50 yards to the Minnesota 6. The Bears scored — with help from a Vikings pass-interference penalty — to make it 48-31.
It was like that Sunday.
Over and over again.
The Vikings came charging back — of course they did — and had a chance to pull this out at the end. The Bears haven’t been able to finish all season long. If the Bears were in Finland, they couldn’t Finnish. But Bowman, whose nickname should be “In All Likelihood, You’ve Never Heard of Me,” picked off a Frerotte pass to finish off Minnesota.
The natural question Sunday was, “Can anybody around here play defense?” And the natural answer was, “Yes, but Dan Hampton prefers radio now.” Or better, “No, Chris Harris is in Carolina now.”
Neither quarterback faced much of a rush, and the result was a lot of offense. The Vikings amassed 439 yards of total offense. The 89 points tied the Bears record for combined points in a game.
Orton was excellent, completing 21 of 32 passes for 283 yards and two touchdowns. Frerotte threw four interceptions. Orton threw none.
“He’s feeling unstoppable,” Booker said of his QB.
The Bears raised their record to 4-3 and remain tied for first place in the NFC North. Up and down they go. Where they’ll stop, nobody knows.
The Vikings had stupid penalties and made bonehead decisions. And then the second quarter started. In fact, they might have played one of the dumbest games on record. It’s part of the reason they were no longer in first place after Sunday’s game. Case in point: With no timeouts left and 1:13 to go, the Vikings’ Gordon made a fair catch on Brad Maynard’s punt at the Minnesota 25. How about trying to get some yardage to give the offense a better chance to score?
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The Bears’ offensive players didn’t seem to care what Minnesota did. They think they have a juggernaut on their hands. Maybe they do. It also helped that the Vikings refused to kick to Devin Hester, giving the Bears excellent field position.
Minnesota went for it on fourth-and-1 in the third quarter, oddly choosing to pass the ball rather than hand it off to the all-world Peterson. The pass fell incomplete. The Vikings apparently get off the bus passing the ball.
Who did they think they are? The 2008 Bears?
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