Bear Down-er

From Eric: Having been a Bears fan all my life, I have to say that last night's game was quite an emotional roller coaster...although this ride only had a short uphill and a long and painful downhill.

For all of you Rex-haters, which includes pretty much all Chicago media, there really is no quarterback controversy in Chicago. I will echo Lovie's words exactly: Rex is our quarterback. There is some reason to my rhyme. First of all, this was his first complete season--and taken as a whole, it was a pretty darn good first season at that: 13-3 record, 3193 yards, 23 TD's vs. 20 int's, and a 74.8 passer rating. If we compare that with Brett Favre's first complete season as a starter, we do not see a huge difference: 9-7 record, 3303 yards, 19 TD's vs 24 int's and a 72.2 passer rating. Secondly, Grossman led the Bears to a Superbowl appearance, although I will admit that was shaky--but that was something Favre, although successfully, didn't do until his fourth complete season. And finally, players are allowed to have bad games--and many of the greatest have indeed come back from the worst of games to have great careers. John Elway lost his first two Superbowls, the second of which his stat line looked like this: 14-38, 258 yards, 1 TD, 3 int's in a 46-10 loss (his third Superbowl appearance was even worse: 10-26, 108 yards, 2 int's in a 55-10 loss). Three lost Superbowls with a combined score of 40-136. We would all agree that Mr. Elway went on to have a pretty good career after that first Superbowl loss, right (4 more Superbowl appearances and 2 Superbowl wins)? Now, there is no way for me to say that Rex will turn into anything compared to the guys I just brought up--he certainly has a lot of growing up to do--but the things they had going for them was fans who believed in them, supportive and disciplining coaches, and they didn't live in Chicago where the collective media will fall madly in love with you one week and rip you to shreds the next week--unless the columnist is Jay Mariotti, and then you will be ripped to shreds every week. I hope that Chicago and its media will soon take a lesson from the "hated" Green Bay Packers fan base and just love your team no matter what--with a media that supports and merely reports on its team rather than put their fans and players through this constant editorial barrage. By the way, Elway's first complete season looked like this (15 games): 13-3 record, 2598 yards, 18 TD's 15 int's, loss in the first round of the playoffs.

Okay, the good news about the Superbowl (aside from the first 10 minutes) was that we got to go to our friend Jen's house for a party. There was an assortment of snacks and drinks, including football shaped cookies and a biscuit and yoghurt combination that Rich called the Wacker, in honor of Chicago's Wacker Drive. At halftime, two of the guests decided to go outside and play some football themselves, only to come in 2 minutes later complaining that their lungs had frozen solid. Here are some more pictures of our night: