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Apparently, the Bears' on-field issues aren't enough in 2009, because now a player who hasn't played since the first half of Week 1 is causing a huge distraction. It all started with a piece from Michael Silver of Yahoo! Sports which ran early Monday morning. In it, Silver chronicled his experiences in spending the weekend -- including watching the Bears get destroyed by the Vikings on Sunday -- with the Bears' injured Pro Bowl linebacker Brian Urlacher. To me, the story was fine. Urlacher vented during bad portions of the game (too many of them) and became really excited during good plays (like Jay Cutler's touchdown pass to Johnny Knox). I really was going to leave the thing alone, as it was entertaining and I could personally relate to how frustrated Urlacher was. Of course, I'm only blogging about the team. Urlacher's still a member of the team -- a captain, in fact -- so he's apparently not allowed to say anything he's feeling.
Thus, the firestorm surrounding a few meaningless words began.
- Warren Sapp, on Inside the NFL, said Urlacher needs to "shut up." Sapp did make a good point that Urlacher should be with the team, watching film and helping the linebackers who are filling in learn how to play the middle linebacker position in his absence.
- Many share the sentiment of David Haugh, who claims Urlacher is making matters worse with the team by his negative comments in the article.
- Some thought Urlacher didn't include enough people in the bashing -- as he really only hit on Cutler, some coverage issues and Matt Forte not making anyone miss.
- Lovie Smith obviously wasn't happy, but didn't do much to say he was angry either. Does he even get angry, by the way? No wonder the players don't want him fired, yet play many times like they don't care.
- Message boards and Chicago sports talk radio are abuzz about many different aspects of the comments, but, again, mostly focused on Cutler vs. Urlacher like it's some sort of cage match where everyone has to make a choice.
- And, of course, Urlacher went into spin mode.
My personal opinion? While Urlacher should be a bigger voice in the locker room, even being injured -- after all, he is the captain -- it's hard to find fault in a guy who is showing genuine emotion in watching his team play like crap. If he didn't care, he wouldn't have been getting so worked up. Sure, things should stay inside the locker room, the biggest mistake Urlacher made here was allowing a columnist to watch the game with him. He should have known something would have come out to which thousands of people would overreact.
Now, let's just move on and let the team stumble to their 6-10 finish. If that.
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