Maybe this will get to shut up about those shrimps, Bubba.
It was a win over the hated Packers, at home, by 12 points, with Packers players routinely scooped up off the turf and carried to the sidelines. It was the first home win over the annoying cheesers in 12 tries. The Bears are 9-3, they have a two game division lead with four to go. The defense continues to shut down, bludgeon and smack the will to fight out of opponents.

So why is there a tangible sense of dread now?

Part of it is that the Packers are so bad (two and ten for chrissakes, two and ten!) that while it was fun to watch them get physically assaulted over and over again, not scoring an offensive touchdown against that bunch is a red flag big enough to be seen from the International Space Station.

Early in the season, Kyle Orton played OK and the Bears started 1-3 and he got mild amounts of praise. Then the Bears started their current eight game winning streak and you could see him getting better. His throws were crisper, he made good decisions and he got a lot of credit.

Then he played lousy at New Orleans. Before you could worry, he played very well, in a win over Carolina, on in which he made several great throws, even if only about half of them were actually caught.

Last week in Tampa he struggled, but nothing like yesterday. Before our very eyes, Kyle Orton regressed to the point where he could have been Craig Krenzel. Thankfully, he didn’t go all Jonathan Quinn on us, but it was scary.

On a day when they ran the ball well, the Bears still only had 10 first downs. They let Green Bay hold the ball for more than 36 minutes. The Bears didn’t convert a third down all game. They didn’t get a first down in the third quarter. The Bears have played good defenses in the past couple of weeks. Carolina’s is excellent, Tampa Bay’s is pretty stout, but the Packers have too many key players wearing air casts to do THAT to a playoff team.

It could be that it’s just too simple to pin the blame on Orton. His receiving corps isn’t exactly scaring anyone. Apart from Muhsin Muhammad, who is pretty damn good, there’s not much. Mark Bradley looked like he was coming on, and he tore his ACL. Justin Gage’s entire career has been one of following up a good game with one in which the only time you see him is on your milk carton. Bobby Wade? Gulp. If not for the return of superstar Bernard Berrian (huh?) the Bears would have passed for…get this…nine yards. Nine.

Desmond Clark isn’t helping much, either. It’s entirely possible that he has some sort of defect that prevents his hands from closing. He’d be a tremendous volleyball player with his ability to bat balls in the air. That’s not so great from your tight end, though.

So what do you do if you’re Lovie Smith? Every week, presumably, Rex Grossman gets a little bit healthier. He’s more talented than Orton (or so we’re told), though incredibly, Orton has now started twice as many NFL games as Grossman. So you actually have a rookie with more experience than the veteran whose job he got. And, it’s not to say that Orton doesn’t have NFL skills. He’s got a good arm, he seems to have learned the offense and the biggest problem he’s got is that everything he does he’s doing for the first time. Which is pretty much the same situation you’ll be in if you go Rex.

But if Lovie says he hasn’t thought about making a switch, he’s fibbing. In his postgame remarks he mentioned, by name, Nathan Vasher, Thomas Jones, Adrian Peterson, Brad Maynard, Robbie Gould and Brian Urlacher, but said the team needed to get better play at the “quarterback position.”

If we could go back to August it’d smack us in the face just how much faith Lovie had in Rex. It bordered on the irrational. To Lovie’s neverending credit, when Rex got hurt and Chad Hutchinson played like…Chad Hutchinson he did something his two predecessors would never have done. He dumped Chad and went with the rookie.

It’s one thing to think you can win if your QB puts up 150 yards and doesn’t throw any picks. That’s pretty much what Orton’s done, in the Bears’ best offensive games. Maybe his 7-16, 65 yard performance yesterday was just a bad day at the office and something that won’t happen again this year. When people say the QB’s stats are irrelevant, they are, in the case of the Bears, correct. But it’s the throws Orton’s not making now that are troubling. He’s throwing fade routes to receivers and far too often throwing the ball all the way to the bench. Yesterday, for the first time, he got sacked because he held the ball too long. Waaaay too long, on two separate occasions. It’s one thing to stop improving, but he’s starting to regress.

If he plays competently (dare to dream) next week in Pissburgh, by all means leave him out there. But if he starts to struggle again, could you really blame Lovie if he sent number eight out on the field for a few series, just to see what happens?

Right now the Bears’ defense isn’t just good, it’s great. Sure they gave up more than 350 yards on Sunday, but the Packers only threatened to score twice all day, and the Bears’ offense just kept giving Green Bay the ball.

While the Bears’ defense is good all the time, they are particularly efficient and brutal in the fourth quarter of games. By that time their eight man front-four rotation has tired out your offensive line. You are behind in the game and they know you’re passing and they start planting your quarterback face down in the turf.

The pounding they gave Brett Favre the final 20 minutes of the game was a thing of beauty yesterday. Sure he’s old, and sure he misses Javon Walker and Ahman Green, but this guy has tormented the Bears for 26 straight starts. How many times have we seen him do that sprint down the field into the end zone to celebrate another touchdown pass at Soldier Field? So it was fun to see a different kind of trip down the field. One that was more towards the sidelines and had a noticable limp to it.

For all the hand wringing about the offense, what’s most likely to kill the Bears is their punt returning. We thought it was a moral victory when Bobby Wade lost his punt returner job to Rasheed Davis. Only then we watched Rasheed do it. Yikes. After a nice 20 yard return, he turned into Bobby Wade, fumbling one and muffing another. Then Wade was back on the job. Guh.

Are you telling me the Bears don’t have anybody else? How about Urlacher? He did it in college. And how much fun would it be to watch 180 pound “gunners” try to tackle him just after he catches the punt?

OK, that’d be fun, but it’s probably not a good idea. How about just not putting anybody back there? Just let the ball roll to a stop?

Honestly, it’d be safer and hardly any worse.

The day got better when just minutes after the Bears beat Green Bay, the Baltimore Ravens drove 60 yards in under a minute to kick a game winning field goal against the Texans, keeping Houston ahead of Green Bay in the Reggie Bush derby. It’s like Green Bay lost twice in one day. That’s always fun.

All of this leads to the most important question of the day. Just how senile is Dick Stockton? How does he even find the airport? He wasn’t even the most annoying announcer yesterday. (Though his call on Robbie Gould’s missed field goal was an all-timer, “Here’s the kick. It’s long enough! It’s short!”)

Moose Johnston’s not normally all that annoying. He’s like Troy Aikman only heterosexual (well, presumably, what was with his black turtleneck yesterday?) and less concussed. I knew what he was trying to say (over and over and over again) about how the Bears are more concerned with running the ball and avoiding turnovers that would put their defense in bad spots than anything else. But the way he kept explaining it sounded like Lovie doesn’t want his offense to score points. Granted, it looked like it yesterday, but it’s not true. Is it? Nah.

There were several other annoying things. The second quarter personal foul for roughing the passer on Tank Johnson was a joke. To his credit, Moose said it was a lousy call. What Tank did to Favre was…oh, what’s the technical term for it…he, uh…tackled him. God forbid.

The Favre ass-licking was held to a minimum but it still cropped up from time to time. Why is it that announcers won’t point out the obvious anymore? Favre stinks.

He was great, and even bitter Bears’ fans don’t deny that (which proves just how great he was), but he’s not anymore. The past few seasons he was average and now he’s bad. The Bears intercepted him twice and dropped four more. Several of his passes were so far off the mark, you really couldn’t tell who they were intended for. In fact, Favre lost the game in all likelihood when he made a truly horrendous pass into the end zone at the end of the first half. Peanut Tillman will never have an easier interception as long as he lives. Then, Peanut made a great decision. He was five yards deep in the end zone and for most teams, stopping a scoring drive just before the half is a victory in itself. But not for Lovie’s Bears. No sir. If you give them the ball, they’re going to try to score. I’m sure this has nothing to do with the state of the offense (sure). Tillman made a great move at about the ten yard line, picked up some blockers and very nearly went 105 yards for the touchdown. But he did set up a field goal and a potential ten point swing. I’m not so sure the Bears would have given up a second touchdown to Green Bay, but it was at least a six point swing. And instead of going into halftime down 10-6, they were up 9-7.

It’s on plays like that that you wonder what Favre is thinking. If anything.

Hey, after years of killing the Bears in Chicago, Brett owed the Bears one.

I keep hearing that Favre’s streak of 26 straight games against the Bears with a touchdown pass ended yesterday, but Nathan Vasher’s pretty sure the streak lives on.

Perfect throw, Brett!