Patient Bears avoiding rush to judgment

Through two preseason games, the Bears are averaging less than 2.4 yards on 53 rushes. While no one's trying to pawn off the sluggish running attack as acceptable, no one's in panic mode yet.

"I think it's still not in a groove," said Cedric Benson, who has 47 yards on 15 carries for a 3.1-yard average. "(But) the more attempts we get, the better we tend to do."

Saturday's third exhibition game, at home against the San Francisco 49ers, should be more indicative of what kind of ground game the Bears will have this season. The starters are expected to play more than half the game -- as much or more as they've played in the first two games combined.

"We've been trying to take steps," said fullback and lead blocker Jason McKie. "In this one, we want to make a statement to let everybody know that we are a good offense, and I think that's what we're going to do on Saturday."

The Bears also ran the ball poorly last preseason, averaging 3.5 yards per attempt. Featured ball carrier Thomas Jones had just 17 yards on 10 attempts, and Benson didn't play at all because of a shoulder injury.

"It's always a concern," coach Lovie Smith said of the lack of production on the ground. "But if my memory serves me right, we were talking about the same thing last year, too. Sometimes it takes awhile for your running game to come around. We'll have a good running game in time. We'll keep working it, we'll keep calling runs, and eventually we'll start getting some production from it."

Once they started playing for keeps last season, the Bears ran the ball adequately, finishing 15th in rushing yards, with Jones and Benson combining for 1,857 yards.

"Over the years, you never know how it's going to turn out," said 13-year veteran guard Ruben Brown. "We haven't been as strong in the preseason as we like, (but) if you watched it over the last three years, you never really had an inkling we were going to be able to be a dominant running team."

"Dominant" is probably overstating the case. "Average" is a more accurate description of the Bears' running game in recent seasons, but they have to be at least as effective on the ground this season if they are entertaining Super Bowl dreams.

Benson doesn't put a lot of emphasis on the preseason, but the third game in particular is worthwhile preparation.

"It's exciting, because you know we come out the second half to start out the third quarter, and we'll see how we look," Benson said.

One inescapable fact is that the Bears will not abandon the running game regardless of how long it takes to make it work.

"During the season, we're going to make it happen," Brown said. "We're going to keep running it, and it's going to break. In the preseason, you don't have much time to set that tempo. You've got to try to run a bunch of different things, and it might work and it might not."

Brown said even if the production on paper isn't there, the offense is making progress in the run game. "It's kind of misleading," he said. "We'll go in and everyone will say, 'Ah, they didn't get any yards.' But to us, we're like, 'Yeah, we didn't get any yards, but we know how to do it now.'æ"

Saturday night, they'll get a legitimate opportunity to prove it, basically their only chance before the regular-season opener at San Diego, since the final preseason game will be little more than a scrimmage for the starters.

"I think we need to take another step," McKie said. "We're only running base plays, so you can't really criticize or judge the running game now. But I think this game will really show where we're at as far as our run game because a lot of our guys will be getting warm, and we'll be getting in a rhythm, and I think we'll really see how our run game will be."