Injured Chicago Bear Brian Urlacher Should Focus on Rehab, Not Analysis

It’s been quite a while since linebacker Brian Urlacher played in an NFL game, and he’s acting like he’s been away forever.

Urlacher’s comments in a story written by Yahoo Sports writer Michael Silver on Monday sounded like something a fan watching a game from the outside would say, rather than an actual team member.

Through the course of watching the Bears get blown out by the Minnesota Vikings with a bunch of Urlacher's friends, Silver detailed Urlacher's comments that sounded like something you’d expect from someone on the outside looking in. And while he isn’t playing, Urlacher is still at Halas Hall and around teammates while doing his rehab from a dislocated wrist.

So he should know better.

The most ridiculous comment Urlacher made focused on quarterback Jay Cutler and former quarterback Kyle Orton.

“Look, I love Jay, and I understand he’s a great player who can take us a long way, and I still have faith in him,” Urlacher told Silver. “But I hate the way our identity has changed.

“We used to establish the run and wear teams down and try not to make mistakes, and we’d rely on our defense to keep us in the game and make big plays to put us in position to win. Kyle Orton might not be the flashiest quarterback, but the guy is a winner, and that formula worked for us. I hate to say it, but that’s the truth.”

Hel-lo, earth to Brian…The Bears have not changed their offensive focus to become a passing team from a running team. The entire “get off the bus running” reputation coach Lovie Smith tried selling to the media over the past five years has been nothing but a myth anyway.

No NFL team gets off the bus running or run anywhere for that matter. Maybe the 1985 Bears did, but that was a long time ago.

The Bears have always wanted the running game to be a major part of their attack, though, and still do.

And the focus this year has been to establish a running game just like they did when Kyle Orton played here. However, they can’t run. Their offensive line and running back Matt Forte haven’t been able to establish dominance on the ground over any team except Detroit.

The Bears are very close to being on pace for the fewest rushing yards in a 16-game schedule in their franchise history (1,330) and are almost certain to set a franchise record for fewest rushing attempts, but it’s happening because they can’t run. Not because they have changed philosophies.

There are two factors at work here which Urlacher should have a better grasp of than what he showed in his comments to Yahoo. One is the running game. The other is his own defense.

The Bears come out trying to run like always, but Matt Forte has 23, 24, 90, 33, 41, 34 and 27 yards in the last seven games as the team slid from 3-1 to 4-7. The 90 yards came against Cleveland, which is an NFL franchise only by technicality.

If Forte could actually gain yardage, they’d run more. He can’t. The line doesn’t block well enough. Forte has appeared a step too slow all year, possibly due to being out of shape because he missed all of June OTA workouts and almost all of preseason.

Forced to pass, Cutler has been easy pickings for a lot of defenses.

Meanwhile, when the Bears can’t run and execute a simple game plan, they fall behind because their defense is nothing like it was in the Super Bowl XLI season, and without Urlacher, it has faded even more.

Urlacher has missed 17 full games since Smith became the Bears' coach. The Bears defense gives up 24.8 points, 354.6 yards and forces 1.5 turnovers per every game Urlacher has missed. In the 75 games Urlacher has played for the Bears under Smith, however, they allow only 19.1 points and 311.3 yards per game while forcing 2.2 turnovers a contest.

So his impact—or in this case absence—is obvious.

The other missing part of the Bears defense is a pass rush from their defensive line. It’s just not consistent enough for a cover-2 team to be effective without blitzing. And when they have to blitz or even focus on something else besides pass rush, such as Adrian Peterson’s running Sunday, the cover-2 can’t be played.

They wind up in zone blitzes and variations of such, and it's not something they're suited to playing. Vikings coach Brad Childress even commented Sunday after the game that the Bears were in "fire zones" and it was leaving some wide receivers wide open as a result. Brett Favre had plenty of time to find those open receivers.

So the Bears can’t run, they fall behind because they don’t play defense well, and then they have to pass because they’re playing from behind. Cutler throws interceptions because he’s under excessive pressure and the end result is six losses in seven weeks.

Now explain how that shows they've willingly gone away from being a running team because they no longer have Kyle Orton.

“I’m not taking a shot at Jay. I’m not one bit taking a shot at Jay, he throws it better, right? And we haven’t tried to run the ball as much. That’s true,” Urlacher said. “But Kyle has won games. His formula works. So I’m not taking a shot at Jay or Kyle.”

Orton won games in Chicago when there was offensive line play good enough to run the ball effectively. With Orton behind this offensive line, with this running attack, the Bears would be 2-9 instead of 4-7.

They only won seven games in 2007 and the object then wasn’t to come out throwing. They wanted to run with Cedric Benson. They couldn’t run until late in the season and had to pass and then came up with the fewest rushing yards in team history to go with a 7-9 record.

But they did begin to run better near the end of the season and Orton came on to quarterback them the last three games when the running attack had actually improved.

“I think right now at this stage, everyone is frustrated with where we are and everybody will speak their mind,” Smith said today at Halas Hall. “Brian Urlacher is a team guy, like all of our players are, and they will voice their opinion. I would like all comments to be positive toward what we’re doing but guys have a chance to voice their opinion.

“I can’t do a whole lot about that, I just know that Brian is a team player. He’s behind everything that we’re doing.”

Translation: Shut up Brian.

It’s bad enough playing with no running game. Having to face criticism about why you’re not running more from a guy who is getting paid to do rehab, watch football on television at home and run his mouth is probably more than anyone should have to bear.