Inside the Super Bowl

Three issues have been heavily discussed since Conference Championship weekend: 1) the Bears being disrespected, 2) the Bears being the underdog, and 3) Rex. These three issues actually tie into one another, but we'll take them one at a time here:

What is disrespect?
After the Bears beat the Cinderella Saints 39-14 in the NFC Championship Game, many Bears players like Adewale Ogunleye said that their team had been disrespected because most of the "experts" felt that the Saints would win (and many had predicted a blowout). Some people in the media, angry at being proven wrong, lashed back at the Bears, saying that they've been given due respect all season. This is simply not the case. The fact is, the national media does not like to give the Bears credit, and even when they do, they do it grudgingly and briefly.

I heard on one radio station that the Bears were expected by most people to win their division and get to this point. That's only half-true. The Bears were indeed favored by most to win the NFC North, but a number of people also picked the Vikings. A couple even picked the Packers. On the ESPN preseason predictions page, of all the "experts" at ESPN, not one had the Bears even getting to the NFC Championship Game, let alone the Super Bowl. Not one. All everyone could talk about was Carolina, a team I thought was overrated from the start. Not to toot my own horn, but I was one of the very few people who labeled this team a Super Bowl contender before the season started, as you can see here: http://www.profantasysports.com/easycite/ros.php?PID=3464&cid=7. What was so hard for other people to see was just common sense to me. If an 11-5 team with an improved defense and vastly improved special teams could get better QB play than Kyle Orton had provided the year before, it could go a long way.

When Rex Grossman and the Bears hit a rough patch in the middle of the season, all the national media wanted to do was dismiss the Bears and find the team that would replace them as a contender. The Giants, the Cowboys, the Eagles, you name it. Despite the fact that the Bears kept winning, people kept looking for excuses for why the Bears were winning. The easy schedule. The terrible division. The terrible conference. No one gave the Bears credit for just winning, even as contenders like the Colts lost to teams like the Titans and Texans. But the biggest signs of disrespect came before the NFC Championship Game. The "experts" fell so much in love with the Saints' high-octane offense that they forgot that you win with three phases, not just one. The Bears clearly had the better defense and special teams, along with home field advantage and a higher scoring average than the Saints in the regular season, yet most of the "experts" predicted a Saints win by double digits. The ultimate sign of disrespect came when ESPN's Sean Salisbury said during SportsCenter that he thought the Saints were the better football team. I laughed out loud at that. He ate his crow after the game, as did Gene Wojciehowski, who called the Bears "soft" during his postseason anti-Bears vendetta. As evidenced by the Bears winning the "Just Shut Up" poll on "Mike and Mike in the Morning", there was a lot of crow left on the table. The truth hurts, I guess.

The mistake that the "experts" make is that they only go on what they've seen lately (and often concentrate only on the negative), without considering the entire body of work and intangibles. Everyone knows that the Bears' defense isn't the same without Mike Brown and Tommie Harris, but people who really know this team also knew that the defense was better than it had played late in the season when many of those games did not matter and some players were injured. There's also a matter of pride. As if they needed any extra motivation, the "expert" picks made a group of angry Bears angrier. After the painful loss to Carolina last year, the Bears had a feeling of unfinished business. They came to training camp with one main goal in mind: to win the Super Bowl. Now they're one game away.

Underdog or Not?
Ever since this column by the Chicago Tribune's John Mullin, some of the usual cynics have hopped on the bandwagon and said that the Bears' underdog mentality is baseless. However, with all due respect to Moon, his column simply misses the point. When Lovie and his players talk about being the underdog, he doesn't mean whether they're technically favored in individual games. It's true that the Bears have been technically favored (based on the line) in almost every game this season. But as they often say, perception is reality, and the national media's perception of this team ever since the Miami loss was that it wasn't a Super Bowl contender. Some other NFC team(s) would rise up and take the Bears' place. This was also the perception amongst many in the local media. The Bears couldn't keep winning, could they? Even when they did, they often got only a passing mention. Cowboys this, Giants that, Saints this, Eagles that, and oh, by the way, the Bears won. Case in point: the day after the Bears shocked the world by winning the NFC Championship Game, it was Bill Parcells this, Peyton Manning that, Tom Brady this, and oh, by the way, the Bears won. Going into that game against the Saints, the Bears might've been 2 1/2 point favorites, but did it really feel like that to anyone? The great majority of the "experts" picked the Saints to blow away the Bears. Fan sentiment around the country was also on the side of Cinderella. It was like no one outside of Chicago picked or wanted the Bears to win. Now, the Bears are the underdogs in Vegas, few experts are picking them, and fan sentiment is on the side of Peyton Manning. There's no disputing that.

Lay off Rex
The criticism of Rex Grossman has gone past ridiculous and become a farce. The Mariottis of the world will tell you that it's fair and well-deserved, but if you're not biased against Rex and/or this team, it's easy to see that Rex does not deserve this. Bashing Rex has become the fashionable thing to do, and the media has just piled on to the point where some media types have become confrontational with him. It's like they expect him to say that he's terrible, and they get some kind of joy out of it.

Obviously, Rex has had his ups and downs this season. He is capable of being really good (seven games with a passer rating over 100, tied with Peyton Manning) or really bad (five games with a rating under 40). Most Bears fans can tell you that. The thing is, some of the media types here in Chicago and many of them around the country think that Bears fans don't know this. They think that Bears fans are dummies. They keep saying that they're just telling the truth, debunking myths, etc., but they're not telling us anything that we don't already know. We know that Rex is not going to be confused with Manning or Tom Brady anytime soon. We know that Good Rex or Bad Rex could show up on any given day. We already know these things, so we really don't need to hear them again, it got really old a long time ago. When Rex called some people (not all, just some) in the media "ignorant" late in the week, he probably shouldn't have used that word, but he was right. Oftentimes, people outside of Chicago (and some in Chicago) don't really know about the inner workings of the Bears' offense, and they just go off the fans' reaction or pile on just for kicks.