You’ve got to hand it to Tank Johnson, Devin Hester and the Bears’ defense. They must love Rex Grossman. Knowing that one good game wasn’t going to be enough to get the focus off of Rex, Devin decided to take some of the heat off with a soul crushing fumble on a kickoff that gave Tampa Bay a chance to score two touchdowns in 70 seconds, the Bears’ defense played the fourth quarter like the object was to give up 40 yard pass plays and Tank? Tank went above and beyond. Way beyond.

Tank’s wild week started on Thursday when word got out that police were raiding his home. What they were looking for isn’t exactly known. Probably unregistered guns (found six of them), dope (found a couple ounces of pot) and famed cockfighting star Little Jerry Seinfeld (whereabouts still unknown.)

It was that day that we learned the name Willie Posey. Posey is a live in bodyguard of Tank’s. We all know that means he was a rather large friend of Tank’s from back in high school who got paid to lose to Tank in Madden Football, take the rap when a cop pulled over the car and found weed in the glove compartment and pretty much that’s it. Posey did his job and took the fall for the marijuana the cops found in the house. Tank didn’t even bail him out until early Friday.

Friday night (actually early Saturday morning) Willie ended up dead outside a Chicago bar roughly the size of most suburban garages.

The Bears were not amused by any of this, but especially by Tank’s presence at the bar…and the shooting. When he got locked up on Thursday, the Bears told him to get his shit together and they’d deactivate him for Sunday. Tank must have been pretty good, since 12 hours later he was at a bar.

You want to know why the Bears are considering ending Tank’s employment with them? It’s not the arrest, it’s not even the shooting. It’s the fact that he burned through his second chance (probably more like his eighth chance, really) in such short order.

You let Tank stay on the team because he says he’s sorry and that he knows he’s got to shape up, and before the sun can come back up he’s in the middle of something again.

Tank is worried enough about his future that he called a “Bears executive” during Sunday’s game and asked if they had decided to cut him. How he got Vag McCaskey’s phone number, I’m not sure.

The Bears will pretend to take their time and they’ll say they’re making the best decision for the team, Tank and the community. The reality is that they’ll watch the tape from yesterday’s game and see if part of the reason the Bucs paved a highway to the end zone in the fourth quarter is because the Bears were short a 6’3, 330 pound tackle.

It was evident early on that the new tackle tandem of Sir Ian Scott and (Brian Baldinger’s favorite) Alphonse Boone (I know, it’s Alfonso, but Baldy gets it wrong every time and so I’ve decided to make him right) are actually better against the run than Tank and Tommie Harris. They’re bigger and harder to move.

Against the pass? Not so much. Ian and Alphonse don’t move much when it comes to rushing the passer. The Bears compensate by going to Israel Idonije and (can this be right?) former MLB player Barbaro Garbay on passing downs.

Tank can play on any down. Unlike Tommie Harris, he still has both hamstrings attached to his legs. Chances are, Tank could help.

It would seem a little disingenuous for the Bears to dump Tank for his personal issues. It’s bad that his guns were considered to be “easily accessible” by his two kids. Bad and dumb. And it’s troubling that a day after he got arrested he’s at a club getting in a fight and watching his friend get shot.

But the Bears aren’t really an angelic bunch, are they? It’s not like Olin Kreutz ever took a dumbbell and broke Fred Miller’s jaw with it. It’s not like Brian Urlacher can sneeze on a woman at Chili’s and knock her up. It’s not like Brian Griese ever got drunk and fell down his stairs. I’m sure that every team would love to find 52 guys who act like Craig Krenzel. The problem is that most of them would subsequently play like him, too.

The trendy pick to win the Super Bowl right now is the Cincinnati Bengals. They can’t go four days without a guy getting arrested. It doesn’t excuse it, of course, but it does reinforce the fact that a lot of pro football players are large, angry, violent, dumb men. A lot of the best ones, are. You can’t turn them loose on Sunday and love it, and then expect some of that won’t seep out in less desirable places during the week.

The real scary part of yesterday’s win over the Bucs (and by the way, you may not have heard over the moaning of Bears fans, but the Bears clinched home field through the playoffs) is how awful the defense was for a second-straight week. Lovie can try to convince us that it was really just one bad quarter, but it was the second straight fourth quarter that the Bears couldn’t stop the other team from doing…everything. Tim Rattay, the Four-time Heisman Trophy winner from La Tech, (and 1997 Nobel Peace Prize winner) lit the Bears up like so many Christmas trees yesterday.

Joey Galloway went 64 yards for six and then one possession later, Ike Hilliard went 44-yards on them. Imagine how far Ike could have gone if he hadn’t gained like 40 pounds since the last time we saw him.

Seriously, that was Ike Hilliard? He looks like somebody taped Dalton Hilliard and Ike Turner together and stuffed them in one football jersey.

The Bears are down four starters, three of them Pro Bowlers. That much we know. You can’t lose Mike Brown, Tommie Harris, Nate Vasher and Tank and not feel it. It doesn’t help that even Brown’s replacement is hurt. But that doesn’t excuse what happened in the last 18 minutes of regulation yesterday. Besides, of the four starters who are out, only Vasher is a safe bet to return, and given how secret they’ve been about his injury, maybe he’s not even likely to suit up again.

But for all their losses, didn’t you think that somebody like Brian Urlacher, or Lance Briggs, or Alex Brown, or Walleye Ogunleye, or Charles Tillman or somebody (all of those guys are pretty damned good) was going to make a play and stop the absurd comeback?

Tampa Bay hadn’t scored a touchdown in three hours of actual gametime when they scored at the end of the third quarter. They then scored three more in the next 14 minutes. Holy crap.

What was interesting about yesterday was that for the first time since…I honestly can’t remember…you actually felt better about their chances when they had the ball. These are the Bears. Being on offense, even in the best of times, only means that you are about a 60 percent shot at being the team who scores points on the next snap. Yet, Rex Grossman and the offense were the calming part of the game. Go figure.

Even that had its limits. When the Bears got the ball back with just over a minute left it was tempting to boo Lovie for his decision to run out the clock. Like I said, the offense was good yesterday. But Lovie’s decision, as candy-assed as it was, was probably, under any circumstance, the right one.

The Bears lost the toss, kicked off, forced a fumble, recovered it, made a play, got ready to kick the game winner and then Robbie Gould, after making his first 24 field goals on the season, missed his fourth in his last five tries. Great. Just great. Now even that’s gone to hell.

In the end, Rex made a play (though it was pretty much all Rashied Davis), then Adrian Peterson broke a run and the Bears kicked a field goal to win it.

It is a testament to how good this team was for so long this year, and how high everyone’s expectations are, that a win to go 12-2 and clinch the NFC’s best record was met with a shrug and a “oh, crap, this could be ugly.”

They won’t play a game that means anything for almost a month, now. Scrimmages against the Lions and Packers remain on the schedule, and unlike last year, Lovie’s going to play his starters in both games (though you figure in both games, they’ll all leave early).

That’s partly because of the way the Bears bombed in the playoffs last year and partly (mostly, really) because everybody needs the work.

Lovie never admitted it, but the only reason Rex didn’t play in the finale last season was because the Bears were worried his ankle would snap in half again, and if it did, they wanted it to be in the postseason tournament, not in a meaningless game in the Metrodome.

Here’s my thought (and really, this is born out of years as a Cubs’ fan). When Rex was playing bad nothing was going to physically hurt him. In that game two weeks ago against the Vikings, a meteor the size of an Escalade could have fallen on him and he’d have gotten right up. Now, if he really is back to playing well (and 29 of 44 for 339, two touchdowns and only one “holy crap, where are you throwing that” yesterday was an excellent sign) I worry that he’ll get hurt. Not enough to wrap him in bubble pack and hide him until January 14, but enough that the fatalist in me won’t be surprised at all if we see bone sticking out of his leg on one of the next two big holidays.

Speaking of the Cubs, just who the hell were they bidding against for Jason Marquis that they gave him a three year contract? Oh, never mind, that’s for another column.

I guess we should look at yesterday’s game and feel glad that the Bears pulled it out. They’re the only team to lay claim to best team in the NFC and deserve it for any stretch this year. The Cowboys wrestled it away for an ill-fated week, and then so did the Saints. Maybe it says something about the Bears that when all the momentum completely turned on them, they were able to stop it and turn it around?

That’s what we want to believe.

You’re not buying it either, are you?