Bears' Ratliff a sad sacker

Neither the lumberjack-thick, curly beard, nor the smeared eye black that blended in with his wild whiskers masked a smile on Jeremiah Ratliff's face.

There was none.

There was only disappointment on Ratliff's battle-worn mug.

The big Bear's 3½-sack performance - which came in just one half of football - might have been four-star worthy, but he could think only about Sunday's final score at Soldier Field. A 27-14 loss to Miami dropped the 3-4 Bears to 0-3 on their home field.

"It wasn't about me," said Ratliff, respectfully. "You just got to do what you can to win the game. It wasn't enough. So it's back to work and try to do it again next week."

Can a Bears defensive player do again what Ratliff did? The 6-foot-4, 303-pound defensive tackle went to four straight Pro Bowls with Dallas from 2008-11 as "Jay" Ratliff, but the most sacks he ever had in a season was 7½.

"I don't think I've seen it done before," Bears rookie defensive tackle Ego Ferguson said of Ratliff's 3½ sacks in one half.

"It's amazing, man," said first-year Bears defensive end Jared Allen. "Jay is a heck of a player. That's one of the reasons I came to play with a guy like that. He's a beast. He's a force."

Ratliff sacked Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill for a 5-yard loss on the game's first play from scrimmage, flexed his muscles enthusiastically and never relented. He opened the second quarter with a sack, too, dropping a scrambling Tannehill. Ratliff notched his third sack six plays later, forcing the Dolphins to try a 50-yard field goal - which they missed.

Ratliff went high and Allen dived low to sack Tannehill for an 8-yard loss in the final minute of the half, knocking the Dolphins out of field-goal range.

The sacks were the first of the season for Ratliff, who signed with the Bears on Nov. 2 and made his debut for them in Week 13 against Minnesota.

So much for the grizzled veteran looking like a guy who recently turned 33, who missed three straight games this season with a concussion, whose career appeared in jeopardy in 2013 because of a pelvic injury.

"You try to soak up as much as possible," Ferguson, who has 2 sacks this season, said about learning from Ratliff. "He understands the game, and he understands the tendencies."

Ratliff was credited with a team-best 7 tackles (5 solos). It had to have felt wonderful for him, right?

"No, it doesn't feel good," Ratliff said. "We have to win, consistently. This is the time where we need to be putting wins together. You got to win early (in the season) because at the end you can't be trying to stack wins or hope somebody loses so you can get in (the playoffs)."

The only Bears defensive tackle to record more sacks in a game was Jim Osborne, who tallied 4 against Atlanta on Sept. 4, 1983.

But in the end, Tannehill put up Dan Marino numbers (25 of 32, 277 yards, 2 TDs), and the Bears yielded 137 yards on the ground.

"My hat's off to Miami," Ratliff said. "They played a great game. They ran the ball well. They did what they were supposed to do. I thought we were on the field a little too long, defensively. We have to be consistent. We can't be flash players."

If so, despite one player's flash of greatness, the Bears will end up out of the playoffs.

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