A special day for Special 'K' and friends

On 1 of Johnny Knox's pair of kickoff returns in the first half, the rookie burner deliberately took the ball around the left edge and didn't even look toward the middle.

It wasn't important at the time, but it set the stage for Knox's game-breaking return to start the second half.

Knox clutched the kick 2 yards deep in the end zone and darted to the left for several strides before abruptly cutting toward the lonesome grass in the middle of the field.

With every Detroit player except the kicker walled off to the outside of the hash marks, none of the Lions got within sniffing distance of Knox on his way to a 102-yard touchdown.

"That's a killer right there," said Lions running back Kevin Smith. "You never want to have that."

While Knox fell 1 yard shy of Gale Sayers' franchise record, he settled for snapping the 21-21 halftime tie and setting the tone for the Bears' runaway win.

"It was a counter," Knox said. "Set up one way and bounce the other. Coach (Dave) Toub said this was going to be a good return for us coming in from halftime."

"That was exactly what was called," said Israel Idonije, one of the four Bears who comprised the primary wedge. "We set it up and it worked great."

The scariest thing about Knox's return? It wasn't a clear-cut winner for the Bears' special-teams play of the day.

• Brad Maynard kept nailing the coffin corner with his angled punts. He forced the Lions to start inside their 20-yard line on four occasions, including first-half boots that pinned them on their 2- and 6-yard lines.

• Before he left with a shoulder injury, Devin Hester returned a punt 24 yards to allow the Bears to set up at Detroit's 35. Three plays later, Jay Cutler hit tight end Kellen Davis with a touchdown pass to make it 14-14.

• Earl Bennett took over Hester's duties and returned 4 punts for 63 yards, which included broken-field runs of 25 and 20 yards.

In Bennett's case, it makes one wonder whether Toub sensed Hester would get hurt Sunday. Toub had Bennett do some return work in practice this week.

"Out of nowhere, he was just like, 'Catch some punts,' " Bennett said. "It's a lot of fun. I love punt return. It's one of my favorite phases. Every time I'm back there, I try to make a play and get us a great start for another touchdown."

The special teams and the defense gave the offense the ball in such good field position so often, both quarterback Jay Cutler and offensive coordinator Ron Turner half-jokingly complained about the inability to get into rhythm.

"You're looking to try to get tendencies of what (the Lions' defense) doing," Turner said. "And then you say, 'Well, every play's in the red zone, so they may be playing differently when they're outside it.'

"We'll take the ball there every time, but offensively I just didn't feel like that I, personally, got in sync and got in rhythm. We did some good things.

"I'm just excited for when we put it all together. If we put it all together, we can be pretty good. We're still working to get to that point."