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Every week, NFL FanHouse hits the lowlights from Sunday's action, looking at those players who did the most to move their head coaches that much closer to returning to the Bed and Breakfast business.You're a long-snapper. You only have one job, and it's an important one. It's also a job borne out of repetition and mindlessness -- you crouch, you grab the ball, you fire it backwards. Over and over and over again. After so many reps, muscle memory kicks in and you don't have to think about it. You shouldn't think about it, either, because thinking instead of just feeling it through gets you in trouble.
But Chicago Bear long snapper Patrick Mannelly wants to be a thinker. He wants to call shots. He wants to be seen and heard. (You need a pretty high degree of self-importance to create a website called Longsnapper.com, dedicated to establishing yourself as an authority on the subject.) This, as you might have guessed, hasn't turned out well so far in the 2009 season.
It was Mannelly's decision to go with a direct snap to Garrett Wolfe on a 4th-and-11 fake punt in Sunday night's game against the Packers, with the Bears up 12-10. The Bears could have punted, given the Packers about 40 yards to get into field goal range, and relied on a defense that had thus far stymied Aaron Rodgers even without the presence of Brian Urlacher to protect the lead
But a light bulb went off in Mannelly's head. He saw something he thought the Bears could exploit. So he instead snapped straight to the oblivious Wolfe, who caught the ball, wondered what the hell was happening, and got four yards before the Packers tackled him. Though they picked up 15 yards of offense on the ensuing drive, the Packers didn't have to do anything -- Mannelly's botch put them already in field goal range. His hunch was a bust.
The Bears eventually challenged the punt, claiming the Packers had 12 men on the field (they didn't). If this was the reasoning behind Mannelly's decision -- a fire drill audible to catch the Packers sleeping and pick up five free yards -- it was misguided, five yards would have only made it 4th-and-6. More likely, he thought he could exploit the Packers' playcall with some strategery, figuring Wolfe would have a gap to the first down. Think again.
The Packers' go-ahead field goal wasn't the end-all of the contest; the Bears answered right back before the Packers eventually won on Greg Jennings' touchdown catch. Who knows if Chicago would have won if they had punted, but Mannelly's decision made it a lot easier on the Packers to keep pace.
You can certainly look at Jay Cutler's four interceptions as the coach-killing performance of the game (and it certainly doesn't reflect well on Lovie Smith that his new toy was such a disaster in his first game), but the Bears were still in position to win the game after three of Cutler's picks. And then Mannelly happened.
For Smith, whose team has been .500 over the last two seasons and is facing monstrous expectations, coughing up division games in front of the nation because of a rogue long snapper is not the way to further your job security.
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