The Return of The Rextasy

I awake this morning in fear. Fear that yesterday's performance against the Oakland Raiders will mean that later this afternoon in Lovie Smith's press conference, we're going to hear that terrifying sentence.

"Rex Grossman is our quarterback."

It's going to happen.

It only seemed appropriate that on Rex's first play in relief of Griese, he fumbled the snap. The odd thing was, that when they showed the replay, you saw Rex laughing about it. It's probably his greatest strength, and his weakness.

The mistakes he makes do not bother him. And that's what you want from your quarterback. If he makes a mistake, you want him to forget about it and move on. At the same time though, you want him to learn from each mistake and eliminate them.

Not only does Rex not care about making mistakes, but I don't think he cares about fixing them either.

But I don't want this whole post to be about Rex. Yes, he came in for Griese and played well. Yes, he threw the game winning touchdown to Bernard Berrian, but nothing that happened yesterday was any different from what we've seen before.

We already know Rex can throw the deep ball. It's the only throw he can make on a semi-consistent basis. If you take away that one pass though, here are Rex's numbers: 6/13 for 83 yards.

He still throws more incompletions than he does completions, and he still has trouble avoiding a pass rush.

Nothing has changed, folks.

I know the Bears won yesterday, but I actually feel worse about the team now than I did before yesterday's victory. Not just because it marked the return of Rex Grossman, but because of how bad the team looked as a whole.

Coming off of a bye week, in a game against a bad team, that's the best we could do? For the first 56 minutes of that game, the Bears looked like total crap. Well, okay, the defense played pretty well.

They held the Raiders to only 195 total yards, and three points. So I guess we really can't get on them all that much.

The offense though, yeah, they still suck. With two weeks to prepare a gameplan you would think Ron Turner might come up with something new. Instead, we got the same old crap.

Considering that the Raiders were without their two starting cornerbacks in this game, why did the Bears wait until the 4th quarter to take advantage of it? Did you see how badly Berrian beat Chris Carr on that touchdown? He could have done that all day.

Cedric Benson still sucks. He rushed for 76 yards on 29 carries, for a whopping 2.6 yards per carry. That's actually worse than his 3.1 average coming into the game, and 3.1 yards per carry is horrible. He continues to dance around in the backfield for five minutes before picking a hole.

His longest run of the day was nine yards.

I know that Benson isn't alone here, as this offensive line can't knock anybody off of the line anymore. Still, Benson needs to be more decisive. Find the hole, hit the hole. It might close up and go nowhere, but I'd rather see a two yard gain than a two yard loss.

His best run of the day was the touchdown run that capped the game off. Cedric took the handoff, and just kept running. He plowed straight ahead into the line and burst through into the endzone. No dancing. No indecision. Just plowing ahead. It's what he needs to do every time.

So, yes, the Bears got a win yesterday, but it was a win they were supposed to get. The Raiders are one of the few teams in this league that I can actually say I know the Bears are better than. Still, they're only 4-5, and the Packers are 8-1 after shutting out the Vikings 34-0 yesterday.

We're not going to win the division. We're not going to make the playoffs. So if those types of thoughts are creeping into your head this morning, punch yourself in the face. In order for the Bears to make the playoffs, they'd have to go 6-1 to have a realistic shot. They aren't going to do that, and you know it.

Monster of the Midway

• The Defense - What? You thought I'd give it to Rex? Yesterday's game was probably the best effort by the defense we've seen all season. They held the Raiders to 195 total yards, forced three turnovers, and they got off the field on third down. The Raiders were only able to convert on three of their 15 third downs. They also sacked Josh McCown four times, three of which were by Adewale Ogunleye. Trumaine McBride also played his best game ever since he took over for Nathan Vasher five games ago. If the defense can actually carry this performance over into Seattle next week, and keep playing like this for the rest of the season, only then will the Bears have any chance of making the playoffs.

Dumbass of the Day

• Cedric Benson - Seriously, 2.6 yards per carry!?