The Bears Save Their Season

Though if they lose next week against Detroit, they'll be on the verge of losing it again.

At the moment though, I don't care about that. I'm just happy the Bears were able to pull off a victory on Sunday in Philadelphia. In what was an incredibly boring game to watch, in which both teams spent all their time trading field goals, the fourth quarter finally brought some excitement.

The Eagles finally got into the end zone with five minutes left to take a 16-12 lead. The Bears then had a chance to answer, but the offense stalled and was forced to punt. At this point, I figured Brian Westbrook was going to run out the clock on the Bears defense, but the Bears shocked the hell out of me and actually forced Philly to punt the ball back with under two minutes left.

Of course that punt buried the Bears at their own three-yard line. So Brian Griese came on the field and had to drive an offense that hadn't reached the end zone all day 97 yards with no timeouts and under two minutes left.

Oh, and the radio in Griese's helmet went out and he had no contact at all with the sidelines. So Griese had to call his own plays on the final drive, and 11 plays into it he found Muhsin Muhammed in the back of the end zone with nine seconds left for a Bears victory.

"I felt really good calling my own plays in that situation," Griese said. "Before I got out into a 2-minute drill, I kind of look at our play sheet and get in my mind a plan of what we want to do. So I felt comfortable in that situation."

The craziest part of this Bears victory? Devin Hester didn't score a touchdown, and they still won. The Eagles never even gave Hester a chance to return a kick or punt, though Hester did catch a 21-yard pass on the final drive that was the final play before the Muhammed touchdown.

I hope teams around the NFL take notice of what happened yesterday. When teams kick to Devin Hester the Bears are 2-4. When teams don't kick to Devin Hester, the Bears are 1-0.

That's right, Bears opponents. Kicking to Devin Hester is the best way to beat the Bears. You should do it every time.

Just because the Bears won though, it doesn't mean they played very well. Aside from the Muhammed touchdown, the Bears continued to struggle in the red zone under Griese. In the first half the Bears had to settle for a field goal after a pass to Devin Hester was broken up by Sheldon Brown, and they had to do the same in the third quarter when Brown broke up a pass to Greg Olsen.

Last week against the Vikings the Bears didn't have any red zone touchdowns either.

So it's obviously becoming a problem for the Bears, the onus of which can be placed on Cedric Benson. Griese prefers to work the middle of the field and look to his checkdowns when he passes, and that gets increasingly difficult in the red zone where the defense has less ground to cover.

But that's a problem I'll worry about next week. Let's try and focus on some of the other positives right now.

Like the fact the Bears defense didn't give up 35 points this week. Congrats, boys! I actually saw some hitting and wrapping going on out there. What a novel concept. The Bears did give up yards on Sunday, but it was the good old cliche of bend but don't break. When the Eagles got to the red zone, the Bears didn't let them into the end zone.

There's still a ton of room to improve on defense, but at least it looks like they're playing better, and guys like Nathan Vasher are getting healthier. If they can continue to hold on until they're healthy, we might see the Bears defense we've grown accustomed to yet again.

More important than anything, the Bears are still alive for a playoff berth in the wide open NFC.

A loss on Sunday, and the Bears would have been 2-5, and the season would effectively be over. Now at 3-4 they still are a disappointment, but at least their a disappointment with a pulse. Of course, I've thought all this before when the Bears came back in Green Bay to hand the Packers their first loss of the season, and the Bears followed that up with the loss to Minnesota last weekend.

They can't do the same against the Lions at home next week. The best way to get to the playoffs is to win within your own division, and right now the Bears are 1-2 against the NFC North. They have three division games left on the schedule, two of which are at Soldier Field, and it's important that the Bears win all three of those games.

Still, I'll start worrying about that later. For now I'm just going to enjoy Sunday's win and hope that this team has finally figured it out.

Monster of the Midway

• Brian Griese - I thought about giving this to Robbie Gould, but then I remembered he's a kicker and kickers should never win anything. So I'm going to give it to Griese instead. He is never going to blow you away with his play, but damn it, he got the job done when it counted on Sunday. Do you think Rex Grossman could have led the Bears on that game-winning drive? Without any communication from the sidelines? Griese is by no means perfect, but Lovie Smith's decision to finally hand over the reigns to him may turn out to be this season's saving grace.

Dumbass of the Day

• Adam Archuleta - Archuleta didn't do anything on Sunday to win this award, but neither did any of the other Bears. There were no turnovers, no amazingly stupid plays, nobody wanted this award. So I'm just giving it to Archuleta because I hate Archuleta.