Imrem: Bears' issues so far at a slow burn
The Bears as a franchise generally have their Halas Hall house in order.
The McCaskey ownership is quiet, sometimes too quiet. General manager Phil Emery wins the majority of his news conferences. Head coach Marc Trestman rarely stirs up controversy.
Conversely, one by one, week by week, players have been starting little brushfires.
None has accelerated into a wildfire yet. Each isolated flame has either run out of energy on its own or quickly been snuffed.
The best anti-inflammatory is winning, and the Bears fashioned a pair of impressive road victories on the way to a 2-2 record.
Still, enough volatile personalities reside in the Bears' locker room to make you wonder what would happen if a couple of consecutive losses jeopardized the season.
Remember, the verbally flamboyant Martellus Bennett had to be suspended for work habits during training camp.
Lance Briggs missed team activities to open a restaurant in California and also was spotted out clubbing on a Friday night/Saturday morning before a Sunday afternoon game.
Jay Cutler, criticized for his snotty attitude after the season-opening loss, always is a snit waiting to happen.
Then, of course, there is Brandon Marshall, who travels to tape a Showtime program and this week is being criticized for not meeting with local media following a critical misplay in Sunday's loss to Green Bay.
Each of these events is a minor dust-up in the wide scope of an NFL season. Some might even suggest that they are controversies generated by the media.
Maybe so, but in this day and age of widespread coverage nothing involving the Bears is viewed as minor by either new-age or old-age news outlets.
Look, drama is relative. The Bears haven't been caught up in scandals involving drug-policy suspensions or the NFL's domestic-abuse embarrassment.
But there is just enough here and there to wonder whether the discipline demonstrated by the McCaskeys, Emery and Trestman is failing to trickle down to the locker room.
The incidents don't seem to have flared into distractions yet. Certainly nothing is going on that compares to the wild and crazy behavior of the wild and crazy Bears of the wild and crazy 1980s.
With those Bears, it seemed that something goofy came up every day, whether it was Jim McMahon ripping someone in the organization, or a nude Refrigerator Perry being angry over a TV cameraman taping him after a game, or Mike Ditka getting into it with someone, anyone, anytime, anywhere, everywhere.
That group still won Super Bowl XX, so maybe it didn't matter. But it didn't win another championship when it should have, so maybe it did matter.
Regardless, the difference between then and now is that the '80s Bears had so much talent that they could absorb some controversy. This group of Bears is nowhere near as capable of playing through this negative news bulletin and that nasty news flash.
The margin for error for the 2014 Bears is narrow, as reflected in a loss to the Bills and collapse against the Packers.
Even if the Bears are better than that, in the end they'll probably need more than talent to be better than NFC teams like the Seahawks, Packers, Lions, 49ers, Cardinals and perhaps a couple of others.
The Bears will need to focus on every little detail in practices, meetings and games. Trestman, his assistants and the players will have to have a single heartbeat.
That means they can't waste time with nonsense like Marshall issuing gibberish over his dealings with journalists, which he has been doing.
Maybe the Bears have to bond as one against the media. Maybe the professorial Trestman has to go Neanderthal on them. Or maybe this isn't anything to worry about at all anyway.
Regardless, it just might be something to monitor as the season unfolds … or unravels.
mimrem@dailyherald.com