Why can’t Bears play this way each week?
In their seemingly eternal quest for mediocrity, the Bears reached .500 Sunday night.
If that sounds harshly sarcastic, so be it.
This time the Bears did it in fancy fashion, hammering the Minnesota Vikings 39-10.
“Hopefully that’s the team we are, the way we played tonight,” said Bears head coach Lovie Smith.
Maybe that is the team the Bears are and will continue to be the remainder of the season. Seeing will be believing.
Devin Hester returned a kickoff for a touchdown. Jay Cutler turned in another impressive performance at quarterback. The defense improved even though Julius Peppers competed on one leg.
Good stuff, but why aren’t the Bears one of the NFL’s select few teams capable of playing that way most weeks and most seasons?
The victory elevated the Bears’ record to 3-3 and returned them to their customary middle of the NFL.
Sorry, but that isn’t good enough. The bar isn’t high enough. The goal has to be sustained excellence.
Doesn’t it seem like mediocrity is where the Bears always are? You know, somewhere in the NFL middle with about a dozen other teams instead of at the top with a select few?
One week the Bears embarrass themselves in Detroit on national TV. The next week they embarrass the Vikings in Soldier Field on national TV.
“We needed to make improvement,” Smith said. “We got back to the national stage to show we’re better than we showed last time.”
History sort of indicates that the Bears are what they were both last week and this week: Win one, lose one, win a couple, lose a couple.
Every year the consensus is that the Bears start out as an 8-8 team, meaning they’ll finish somewhere between 6-10 and 10-6.
Last year the Bears were lucky in every way imaginable and expanded the range to 11-5. Of course, that success essentially was based on circumstance rather than merit.
This franchise has muddled in this middle for four or five years — 7-9, 9-7, 7-9, 8-8 disguised as 11-5, now 3-3 — never really terrible and never really terrific.
The Bears are patched up every time they start leaking. Then they fall down every time they start falling up.
The 2006 Super Bowl season? Nice job, but did that team ever remind anyone of the Bears’ 1985 Super Bowl champions?
Didn’t think so.
Man, would it ever be neat if the Bears assembled enough good young talent to become, dare we dream, a dynasty.
Nothing less is good enough, really. Any team can get to a Super Bowl and lose. Even the Arizona Cardinals demonstrated that not long ago.
Every NFL front office is supposed to build a winner that keeps on winning the way premier franchises like the Patriots, Steelers and Colts have, and probably now the Packers will.
That doesn’t mean the Bears have to win the Super Bowl every year. Those perennially top teams certainly haven’t.
But it does mean that with all the resources of a signature NFL franchise in a major market, somebody should mold the Bears into annual championship contenders.
Instead the Bears were right back in a familiar spot Sunday, chasing mediocrity, reaching .500 and stuck on average.
The Bears figure to hover around that neighborhood all season, vying for the playoffs, maybe qualifying, maybe not.
Muddling through the middle is no way for one of the NFL’s premier nameplates to operate.
mimrem@dailyherald.com