Hester, Manning could be the difference Sunday
The area where the Bears have the biggest advantage over the Packers in Sunday's NFC championship game is on special teams.
Not only do the Bears have Devin Hester, the all-time leader in career punt/kickoff returns for touchdowns, they have safety Danieal Manning, who took over the kickoff-return duties from Hester midway through the 2008 season and led the NFL with a 29.7-yard average.
“This guy is a great kick returner,” Bears special teams coordinator Dave Toub said of Manning. “He would be a star on any team, anywhere you put him.”
Manning's full-speed-ahead style could be described as an accident looking for a place to happen. Nobody runs harder or with more determination than Manning, who flies in the face of opposing tacklers as if they were giant cotton balls, not huge mounds of muscle.
When it comes to return specialists, the Bears have quality and quantity. Last year, with Manning busy in the secondary, then-rookie wide receiver Johnny Knox spilt the kickoff-return duties and averaged 29.0 yards, second best in the NFL.
Manning and Knox have allowed Hester to focus on wide receiver and punt returns and, after a two-year drought, he is again the most dangerous return specialist in the league. Hester brought back 3 punts the distance in 2010, tops in the league.
No one was happier to see Hester recapture the magic than Toub, who said the NFL's all-time leader in kick-return touchdowns temporarily lost faith in himself.
After returning 11 punts or kickoffs for touchdowns in 2006 and '07, his first two seasons in the league, Hester was blanked in '08 and '09. Toub said the lack of success got to Hester.
“I felt him pressing,” Toub said. “You could feel it in games. He would try to create things that weren't there instead of trusting the return. Sometimes he would abort. If we had a right call he would stop and say, ‘I saw something left.' He'd try to do it all on his own sometimes.”
Toub said Hester rededicated himself to the return game last off-season and during training camp last summer.
“He's trusting his blockers now,” Toub said. “He knows he's going to have room when we do our job. I think that's the biggest thing that's helped him.”
While Hester is clearly the special teams star, Toub has a lot of other standouts, like leading tackler Corey Graham, who helps make the Bears' overall special teams one of the league's best every year. Graham had 25 solo tackles during the regular season, more than twice as many as the runner-up, Garrett Wolfe, who had 12. Last week Graham downed one Brad Maynard punt at the Seahawks' 1-yard line and another at the 5.
“We have guys like Corey Graham, who had a Pro Bowl season; and Rashied Davis, what a great role player he is,” Toub said. “Everywhere you put him, he's just a great football player.”
Davis plays on all of the Bears' special teams and, over the years, has returned punts, kickoffs, blocked for both and covered both.
Toub has lots of guys like that. They are guys who, at some time in theie lives, were stars on offense or defense, but now make their marks mostly on special teams. Getting players to buy into “the third phase,” is part of Toub's job, but it's also an organization-wide project.
“We do a good job of evaluating players, making sure that they have a special-teams background, No. 1, before they come in. Then, once they get here, we brainwash them.” Toub said, joking — kind of.
“The veterans talk about how important special teams are, and how Coach (Lovie) Smith does a great job with the amount of practice time that we get,” Toub said. “We talk about it, we harp on it, we watch tape, and guys want to be part of it. It's a pride thing.”
And sometimes, for some players, it's a survival thing.
“They understand that they're gong to make the team through special teams a lot of times,” Toub said. “We got it going. It's been seven years now, and we've got the ball rolling. It's something that we are. I mean, that's who we are: a good special teams unit.”