They say football is a team sport. This is true for the most part. Teams that play their best together for 60 minutes in almost every time. One great player can’t beat a great team. However, there can’t be any great teams without that one great player. Everybody knows it. That one player who is the pivot around which all the others turn. The “franchise” if one prefers to call it that. Look at the past Super Bowl champions, they all have one. Tom Brady, Von Miller, Marshawn Lynch, Ray Lewis and so on. The Chicago Bears are no different.
Their existence has always been defined by having or not having that single “pillar” player. The superstar who creates change. The man who gets teammates to follow him, fans to fills the seats and tickets to sell. Most importantly they tend to bring about more winning. Look back at every era in Bears history. The most successful ones all have the same thing in common. They had that player and everybody knew his name.
- 2000s: Brian Urlacher
- 1980s: Walter Payton
- 1950-60s: Bill George and Dick Butkus
- 1940s: Sid Luckman
- 1930s: Bronko Nagurski
Life with those players can be so grand, but life without them has proven equally gut-wrenching. The Bears have experienced such lulls in the past. It was true for most of the 1970s and 1990s. It’s been true since 2013 when Urlacher retired. Chicago continues to wait on when that next hero will step out of the mist to pull them out of the mud.
Chicago Bears have promising candidates but nothing “special” yet
This is not to say the Bears of today don’t have good players. They do. Certainly, more than they had a couple years ago. Jordan Howard, Akiem Hicks, Kyle Fuller, Danny Trevathan, Kyle Long, Leonard Floyd and Eddie Goldman have reached that category. Still, can any of them claim they’re anywhere close to the Urlacher level? Of course not.
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That’s not to say none of them can reach it. Howard might be the closest given his back-to-back Pro Bowls. Many certainly hope quarterback Mitch Trubisky is poised to make that jump. He has the athletic capability to do so. It’s a matter of having the desire, work ethic and natural reflect to get himself there. Trubisky already has teammates believing in him, so that’s a vital component. Regardless the waiting continues.
The Bears needed Urlacher to wake the franchise up from this sort of lingering nightmare back in 2000. It was like a jolt of electricity that slowly resuscitated a dying body. After four-straight seasons of misery, Chicago is ready for another jolt. Do the Bears already have it on the roster, or could it be looming in the months to come?
