Last night’s Monday Night Football game was supposed to be the beginning of the end for the 2013 Chicago Bears’ season.  They were going to Lambeau Field to play the Green Bay Packers.  Jay Cutler was out due to a groin injury.  Lance Briggs was out due to a fractured shoulder.  Henry Melton was out due to a torn ACL.  Julius Peppers was a shell of his former self.  The defense couldn’t stop my 85 year old grandma from running all over them so far this season.  No one in their right mind honestly thought that the Bears were going to win.

On the ESPN pregame show, only Mike Ditka predicted a Bears win.  When was the last time that Ditka predicted a Bears loss?  He’s been crazy at least ever since he traded his entire allotment of draft picks to choose Ricky Williams for the Saints and probably well before that.  Another Bears super homer, Doug Buffone, also predicted a Bears win.   Josh McCown going into Green Bay and outdueling Aaron Rodgers had to be a 100 to 1 longshot.  That didn’t stop the Bears fans from showing up in Lambeau and actually having a good gimmick idea.  The Packers fans are known as “Cheeseheads” because they wear foam blocks of cheese on their heads during the games.  So what better way to beat that in a fashion of Rock, Paper, Scissors than to become Cheese Grater Heads?

I predict the sale of those things to sky rocket after last night. They are funny.  They make sense.  A rare combination when it comes to weird fan headgear.  They showed those fans towards the start of the game and weird things started happening almost immediately.  On the very first series of the game, Shea McClellin finally made an impact for the Chicago Bears when he sacked Aaron Rodgers and knocked him out of the game (and maybe the rest of the season:

It has to be the most famous sack in Bears lore since Corey Wooton ended the career of Brett Favre a few years ago.  That play motivated McClellin to have his best game as a pro as he finished with 3 sacks and several pressures.  That injury made the Packers be without Rodgers, Randall Cobb, Clay Matthews and Jermichael Finley.  It officially turned the injury bug into an advantage for the injury depleted Bears.  Josh McCown is better than Seneca Wallace and it showed time and again last night.  McCown marched the Bears right down the field and threw a beautiful touchdown pass to Brandon Marshall:

It showed that Josh McCown was not going to be intimidated by the national spotlight and the importance of the game for the Bears season.  McCown ended the night with 272 yards passing with 2 TDs and most importantly, no turnovers.  Brandon Marshall finished with 107 yards receiving with 1 TD and Alshon Jeffrey had 60 yards receiving with 1 TD.  The other star of the game for the Bears was Matt Forte.  125 yards rushing with 1 TD and 54 yards receiving.  It was quite an offensive explosion for the Bears last night especially compared to recent outings against the Packers.

The Bears did have their fair share of ugly during the game.  The Packers blocked a punt.  Adam Podlesh was just atrocious punting the ball.  In addition to the blocked punt, he had several short kicks.  Chris Conte and Major Wright were their usual God awful selves as safeties.  Eddie Lacy made Conte his bitch on more than one occasion including a near 57 yard touchdown to start the 2nd half as he stood flat footed and watched Lacy run 10 yards towards him and then he just fell to the ground and meekly swiped at Lacy’s feet as he ran past.  Lacy ended the game with 150 yards a TD and a 6.8 YPC average.  James Starks had 40 yards and a TD with a 6.7 YPC average.  So you might be asking why the Packers had Seneca Wallace pass the ball 19 times if the Bears couldn’t tackle Eddie Lacy.  That is a great question that can only be answered by saying that Mike McCarthy is an idiot.  Podlesh was so awful and the Bears defense was so bad at tackling that Coach Trestman decided it was better to go for it on fourth and an inch on his own 32 yard line with seven minutes left in the game and a 24-20 lead.  That goes completely against the old school thinking of football coaches.  I could feel the disturbance in the force as old school coaches were yelling “what are you doing?”  I was in complete agreement with the decision to go for it.  It was fourth and an inch.  The center could move the ball far enough before the snap to make it a first down.  Any play run would just need an inch of forward momentum to convert.  If you can’t get that inch, in that situation, you don’t deserve to win.  The alternative was to let a crappy punter either get his kicked blocked again or get off a weak punt.  The Packers would then have seven minutes to have Eddie Lacy run the ball 60 more yards to get the winning touchdown.  Instead, the Bears coach had some guts, bucked tradition and went for it.  The play that was called was not good.  Handing off to Forte and making him run 3 or 4 yards to get back to the LOS and get the first down was very risky.  It almost backfired.  Decision was right.  Play call was wrong but it worked out in the end.  The Bears ended up running 9 minutes off the clock on that drive and kicked a FG to make it 27-20 with under a minute left.   Green Bay then had no timeouts to drive down the field with Seneca Wallace as QB and under a minute to do it.  Game over and Josh McCown took his place in Bears lore:

Easily one of the most surprising, exciting and impressive Bears victories in quite some time.  The Lions, Packers and Bears are all tied at 5-3 atop the NFC Central division and it is going to be an exciting and interesting second half of the season.