A healthy dose of luck for Bears

Face it, folks, the Bears have been lucky.

Oh, stop snickering at that assertion. Not even the players, coaches or management would deny their good fortune. Not in this particular context, anyway.

The claim has nothing to do with the Bears' schedule, lucky bounces of the ball or even the weather at times.

The Bears' luck to this point comes in the form of medical charts, which are subject to change at any moment in the wickedly fickle NFL.

“We've been blessed to be healthy,” is the way running back Matt Forte put it Monday.

Football's violent nature suggests that any player is fortunate if he isn't walking on crutches by late December.

Think of how many times you have heard it said of someone in real life, “He wasn't ever sick and one day he just keeled over.”

The football equivalent is that a player can train religiously, eat right, feel great … and then in an instant suffer a career-ending collision.

Except, that is, for these Bears so far. The rest of us get hit by buses once and are hospitalized for months, but these particular players get hit by buses dozens of times every Sunday and walk away.

Any number of NFL teams have had their 2010 seasons irreparably damaged by health issues. Meanwhile, the Bears are medical freaks as they enter Sunday's final regular-season game at Green Bay.

“Injuries play such a big part,” head coach Lovie Smith said. “Things have to go your way and they have gone our way this year.”

Every week NFL teams are beaten by attrition. However, every week the Bears became healthier.

So, is this by design? Is it by circumstance? Is it due to medical science? Is good health a skill?

“All of the above,” Smith said before adding, “You have to get some luck.”

Ah, yes, luck.

Too often in the NFL a player reports to training camp “in the best shape he's ever been in,” only to tear something in the first workout and be out for the season.

Luck is nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to injuries. It's something to cherish, so there isn't enough wood to knock on at Halas Hall over the good fortune that is good health.

Smith deserves some credit for this. Perhaps the relative lack of contact in his training camps, often criticized as too easy, prevent aches that later can be aggravated into pains.

Plus, safety Chris Harris said, “Lovie does a great job of keeping us fresh. He gives us the time off that we need.”

Yet even Smith is careful to not take too much responsibility for the Bears' injury list being a lonely place these days.

“We have had the same (work) schedule in seasons where we had injuries,” he noted.

Indeed, just a year ago the Bears lost Brian Urlacher in the opener, other players either missed games or played hurt, and the team never fully recovered.

So maybe the Bears had this fortuitous 2010 season coming. Harris and Forte both indicated Monday that they feel as well as ever this late in the year.

Are the Bears winning because they feel better? Or are they feeling better because they're winning?

Either way, or both, nobody at Halas Hall minds being called lucky if it translates into being called healthy.

The Bears will enjoy it while they can because health is a fragile commodity in the NFL.

mimrem@dailyherald.com