It could've been worse...

By: Harvey

Well, another Chicago Bears season is history, and the Monsters of the Midway missed out on the playoffs despite having a shot right up to the end. They couldn't take care of business in Week 17 against another .500-ish team in the Houston Texans, even though as it turns out a win would've gotten them a wild card berth thanks to the Buccaneers and Cowboys both laying huge, steaming turds in their final games.

Now, the bitching is starting amongst the Bears faithful as the fans begin searching for scapegoats and caterwauling about what might have been.

Let's be real honest here. This team wasn't built to succeed as well as it did. Nobody knew Kyle Orton and Matt Forte were going to have the kinds of seasons they did, and they didn't know the offensive lines — the same bunch of bums that made last season a nightmare — would come back to life and actually do a decent job...outside of John "The Turnstyle" St. Clair, who is the personification of "worthless pile of steaming elephant shit".

The team overachieves, and suddenly I hear people talking as if they believed things should've turned out better. These people are blinded, I think. They got so excited when they realized this team actually had a chance — a feeling created as much by the Vikings' and Packers' underachieving as it was by the Bears actually being a good team — and failed to realize they should've just been happy to have a chance.

I know the goal is always to win a Super Bowl, but a lot of teams start their seasons knowing they have roughly the same chance of getting a BJ from Mother Theresa as they have of actually making the playoff. And yes, I realize Mother Theresa is dead.

This Bears squad qualifies as one of those teams, so I can't understand the foaming at the mouth when they come up short of a playoff bid. Sure it's disappointing, but it's certainly much better than I expected.

They ain't the fuckin' Colts, boys. Not the Patriots, either. This organization hasn't proven it can build perennial playoff contenders. If you want to be pissed off about something, be pissed off that there seems to be a front office in Chicago that isn't 100 percent committed to building winners. Everybody wants to blame Lovie Smith, Ron Turner, Bob Babich, Kyle Orton, God and George W. Bush for the team missing the playoffs...but I'm amazed at how infrequently I hear Jerry Angelo or the McCaskey (McAsshole?) family taken to task.

Angelo has a big job this offseason. He needs to resist any temptation he might have to draft some hotshot offensive players. This team needs to rebuild its defense. The offense isn't great, but it wasn't bad, either. If the defense had performed up to the level it did for the past several years before last year, we're talking about three or four more games it could've won. Much as I hate to say it, that's this squad's biggest problem.