Could the Chicago Bears be winners?

Lovie Smith has been known to break the season down into smaller pieces.

Welcome to the quarter pole.

What have we learned about these Chicago Bears after twenty-five percent of the 2008 season? We have seen them break in the new stadium in Indianapolis with a loss. We've seen them dominate into the second half of the next three games, only to finish with one win from the three.

Let's have a small dose of reality. The Indianapolis Colts the Bears faced on Opening Night are not the Colts everyone has come to bank on in fantasy football. Dallas Clark had his bell rung early and was out. Peyton Manning hadn't taken a snap in a game, and looked rusty. Marvin Harrison looked as ineffective as he has in nearly a decade, and Reggie Wayne became the only option once Joseph Addai was hurt as well.

Let's, however, take another reality pill. The three teams the Bears have faced since Week One are pretty good teams. The Panthers, many forget, were the most popular Super Bowl pick in the NFC for much of the last five years. Injuries kept them from reaching their potential the last few years, but a fully healthy roster has looked good against tough competition. I attended the game in Charlotte and the weather was ungodly; 107 degree heat index on the field in dark navy jerseys doesn't help when it's someone else's home opener.

The Tampa Bay Bucs brought a game plan that I'm not sure Bank of America would have bought: over sixty pass attempts for Brian Griese? Silliness! A team that has one offensive player taken, on average, in the top seven rounds of a fantasy draft in running back Ernest Graham, made Maurice Stovall a household name in Chicago for the first time since he left South Bend. Tampa has found a way to win other games this year just as they did against the Bears.

The deal breaker for me was going to be Philly. The Eagles came into Chicago having lost an awesome offensive shootout with the Dallas Cowboys a week before hurting everything on Ben Roethlisberger's body that bends. They came into Chicago and the Bears did to them almost what the Bucs did to the Bears a week earlier: a game plan that could not have been made up while binge drinking with Kyle Orton in West Lafayette. No huddle offense? A three play, 70-plus yard drive for a touchdown right out of the gates? The Bears scored at will against a team that made the Steelers look like high school kids.

Let me go on record and say that I doubted Matt Forte coming into the season. I liked what I saw in the preseason from him... but I had said that about Rashan Salaam, Curtis Enis, and Cedric Benson. The Chicago Cynic made me say "Let's wait a few weeks before we start saving for a jersey." The kid from Tulane has proved me wrong. He has shown a versatility we haven't seen in this town since Payton, and an ability to run between the tackles that hasn't been seen this effectively since Neal Anderson. Yes, it's been only four weeks. But Forte has blocked well on passing plays, he's caught the ball out of the backfield on legitimate routes as well as swings or screens, and he's shown a knack for getting tough yards at crucial times. I like the kid.

Let me also say that the 4th and Goal play against Philly might change this entire season for the Chicago Bears. Two consecutive weeks, the media in Chicago had blasted the defense for folding their tents and going home after three quarters. The line and linebackers had been grilled for being soft and for not getting a pass rush. Penetration was nowhere to be found on the field. The Eagles called a time out and allowed the Bears defense to look each other in the eye in the endzone and ask each other "Are we for real or are we as soft as everyone says we are?" The dream opportunity for any competitor had arrived, and the Bears stood up in that moment and showed who they were. They got the ultimate shot at redemption and succeeded.

I waited a day to write this to let the emotion of a big win sink in and digest what I witnessed in prime time. I'm confident that what I saw was legit.

Go Bears.