Welcome back to THE VAULT, fellow travelers on the cosmic highway that is Bears fandom. Today I’m gonna torture you by recapping a game that is in my opinion the “Worst Game of Football Ever Played.” Now, I’m not counting those 1930s slug-fests between teams named goofy things like the West Aurora Kings or the Providence Beavers; this title goes to a modern game. I’ve seen 2019 Bengals games that were inherently more watchable than this, shit I’ve seen Despicable Me 2 as a summer camp counselor and I’d rather watch it back to back with kids aged 5-11 in a rec room with mats that smell like pee than watch this again.
I’ve written about the 2011 Bears several times in this column, because I’m a hack and that team was a beautiful trainwreck that was 7-3 before the injury to Jay Cutler against San Diego, and went to 7-5 after this shitshow where they lost Matt Forte. The 7-3 Bears ended up 8-8, that’s the type of legendary implosion that accompanies the loss of the best Bears QB in franchise history to injury. Yes, I said Jay Cutler is the best Bears QB in the history of the franchise, please @ me because I love talking shit on Twitter.
The Bears came into this abomination at 7-4 with a real chance to right the ship against a Chiefs team led by Tyler fucking Palko, in for an injured Matt fucking Cassel. Kyle fucking Orton came in for Palko in this game because he was playing so bad, threw a flea flicker that was 10 yards underthrown, and got hurt on that play and was taken out for Palko again. That’s the most depressing carousel I’ve ever seen, and I’ve gone to Kiddyland with a drunk father who got into it with someone at concessions. Can you imagine that QB room? I’m fucking bored just thinking about it, like they’re all gonna sit there and talk about tax write-offs and complain about the mayo on the sandwiches in the practice facility being too spicy.
I had to drink an energy drink just to get through the highlights, and it’s gonna fuck up my sleep schedule. I can’t believe this shit-ass game from 2011 is going to fuck up my life for a day in 2019. Fels, you need to pay me more dude because this is an exercise in masochism. Forte got hurt in the first quarter and Marion Barber and Khalil Bell picked up the slack in the most boring, shitty way possible. They combined for 18 carries and 78 yards, 41 of those coming on two runs. Think about that, outside of two carries that were 41 yards, two NFL RBs rushed for 37 combined yards on 16 carries. Caleb Hanie went 11-24 for 133 and three interceptions, and was sacked seven times. Some of these numbers don’t even feel real, like there was talent on this team! Hester, Knox, Earl Bennett… those dudes are all at least replacement-level players at their position, but this was a Mike Martz offense so you know that the playbook looked like a Necronomicon with the spirit of Greg Olsen flying out every time you open it. Marion Barber caught a wide open pass on the goal line for the Bears but it was called back via penalty because he wasn’t set, and the Bears got their only three points of the day.
The Bears defense played good enough to win (sound familiar?), but the Chiefs pulled out a win despite Thomas Jones rushing for 36 yards on 16 carries, somehow even worse than Barber and Bell combined. Dexter McCluster had himself the only good game on the ledger: nine carries, 61 yards, four catches for 46 yards, and the game’s only touchdown, a hail mary he brought in off a Brian Urlacher tip right before the half. How many times have we seen something similar: a hail mary caught when a player does what they’re trained to do: knock it down? I say catch that shit or bat it as far away as you can, but I’m literally sitting here in sweatpants thinking about ordering takeout so take that with a grain of salt.
Dwayne Bowe had zero catches on nine targets, Steve Breaston had zero catches on seven targets. For the Bears, Knox went 0-for-8 and Hester went 0-for-4. Despite all of this absolute garbage, the Bears were in position to score with four minutes left when a Caleb Hanie pass hit Roy Williams in the chest on a slant route on about the twoyard line. The ball, as it tends to do around Roy Williams, bounced out and was batted around before an ugly interception ended this ugly ass game.
