For a second (or longer) yesterday you really thought the Bears were going to beat the Rams, didn’t you? They had a 14-3 lead, they had just intercepted a pass in Rams’ territory and things were looking good.

Only then did reality set in.

It went like this.

Mike Martz showed some big time guts, and the Bears…they just tried to hang on.

In the span of about a minute in the second half, the Rams went for it on fourth and two at their own 40 yard line and then pulled off an onside kick in the exact same spot. Both times, Mike Martz basically said to the Bears, “You can have the ball at our 40. We know you won’t be able to do a damn thing with it.”

He was…of course, right.

Mike Martz does some crazy, and infuriating stuff. He burns time outs at the oddest times. He throws caution to the wind with wild play calls in short yardage. But you know what? It works just about as often as the guys who “go by the book.”

That brings us to Dick Jauron. Our nice, calm, studious and horribly milquetoast head coach.

But Jauron’s not going to get fired because he’s boring. Tom Landry was boring and he coached the Cowboys for 29 years. Chuck Noll was boring and he won four Super Bowls. George Seifert wasn’t exactly Mr. Personality…you get the idea.

No, Dick is going to get fired because the Bears are losing. The biggest reason he’s going to lose is that way back when he was hired to replace Wanny, Jauron had slim pickings when it came to hiring people for his coaching staff.

He tabbed Greg Blache to be the defensive coordinator and Gary Crowton to be his offensive coordinator. Blache seemed like a good choice until we all realized he’s completely insane. Crowton was an inspired choice, a longtime college assistant and Louisiana Tech head coach who had a Mike Martz approach to offense.

Crowton’s offense proved to be inconsistent and way too dependent on wide receiver screen passes. Then Gary fled the sinking ship and went to coach BYU into the ground. So the Bears, with just a handful of games remaining in the regular season of 2000 handed the keys over to a bug eyed assistant named John Shoop.

That offseason, Shoop had two things going for him. The Bears had won their last two games in 2000 with him calling the plays, and around the league everyone knew that Mark Hatley was on his way out and a new general manager would be coming in to run the Bears. No top assistant worth his salt wanted to walk into a situation where a new GM was going to whack the lame duck coach and make all the assistants get their resumes out.

So Shoop and Blache are still here. They suck.

Their incompetence was on display in full force on Sunday. In the first half, the Bears blitzed the Rams mercilessly. Mark Bulger was making bad decisions and it was working. On one possession early in the third quarter the Bears got three sacks. No, really. THREE.

Then, it stopped. Either the Bears started to wimp out and play it safe, or the Rams figured out how to attack it. Likely, it was a combination of both. Whatever, Blache was incapable of making an adjustment.

The Bears offense was again awash with indecision. The second half was a brilliant display of incompetence, summed up perfectly by the final drive.

So this is just “poor Dick” then. It’s not his fault. It’s his coaches.

Uh…no. Jauron is supposed to be the boss. The boss makes tough decisions. The boss fires people. Not Dick, though. Through loyalty, or stupidity or whatever, he has stood by and watched as his coaches couldn’t coach. Do we think Bill Parcells would have kept Greg Blache around this long? How about John Shoop? Shoop wouldn’t have lasted fifteen minutes with Parcells. Or Tom Landry. Or Chuck Noll. Or George Seifert.

You don’t have be exciting to make the right decision. You just have to make them. That’s why Dick’s getting fired.

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Today in the Tribune, Groucho is advocating the Bulls trade Jamal Crawford to the Knicks in a package where they’d get back Antonio McDyess (only has one leg), Charlie Ward (has a Heisman) and Frank Williams (if you think Jamal drives you nuts…) Is there a gas leak in the Tribune tower? Somebody send in a canary and see what happens. This is the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard.

Look, there’s a theme among the poorly coached teams in the NBA. Unless you’re the 2001-2003 Indiana Pacers, you can’t win more than you lose with a lousy coach. Your players take bad shots, they play bad defense and they make horrible decisions if you have a bad coach.

Do you know how you can tell who’s a bad coach?
1) They never change the lineup or their rotation. Ever. They just push buttons and hope to god their team makes enough plays to win. They normally don’t.
2) They always change the lineup and the rotation. They say they’re searching for the right mix, when the reality is that they have no idea what that mix looks like. They’re clueless. They’re Bill Cartwright.

The Bulls start a different lineup every night, and it’s not always because of injury. I don’t care if my brother is the Knicks “owner”, we’re not going to help them out by trading them an actual player.

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Also in today’s Tribune, Paul Sullivan urges the Cubs to pull off a trade for Richie Sexson. This isn’t going to happen for a number of reasons. Chief among them is that the Brewers don’t want to trade their best player to the Cubs and watch him bash their brains in for a decade. But secondly is that in any package the Cubs are giving up four or five pitchers. Look, I know the system has depth, but their biggest deficiency is the bullpen. Trading away The Farns and Juan Cruz and guys like that means you need to pull even more rabbits out of hats to fill bullpen slots.

Sexson’s a stud. And even though it would make the Cubs incredibly right handed (Sosa, Alou, Sexson, E-Ramis in the heart of the order) they did some of their biggest damage at the end of the regular season and in the playoffs with Karros at first base. If I’m Jim Hendry I’m all over these talks. I want Richie. I don’t want him in San Francisco with our catcher, AJ Pierzynski. I’m just saying that if I’m Doug Melvin, I’d rather get a little less back for Richie and have him out of the tri-state area. That’s all I’m saying.

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In a column on Saturday, Peter Gammons said that the Cubs have interest in JT Snow. What kind of interest? Do we need somebody to scrape mildew out of the shower? Is he going to help drag the tarp on and off the field during rain delays? Just exactly why do we need to add a banjo hitting lefty first baseman to Hee Seop and Randall? I just thank god that Gammons is never right.

JT Snow? What’s next, the return of Lenny Harris?

Uh oh.

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Even David Huh knows this is bad. And that’s saying something.

RW giveth and he taketh away. This is progress though, usually he doesn’t giveth.

Paul Edinger is in a slump. Gee, ya think?

Groucho urinates all over Eddy Curry. This is brutal. Even I don’t go off like this. Much. “Chandler has the technique of a drunk on ice skates. As for Curry, sorry, son, but cut out the Hershey bars for at least an hour. And work on your game for, oh, say, about 10 minutes a year. And if they have been working on their games, what’s different than what we saw two years ago?” Wow.

Mariotti puts down the doughnut to castigate the Bears. For once, he’s right.

NIU won’t be going to a bowl, unless they buy tickets. If you think the Bears play some dumb defense, you should have seen NIU’s scheme in defending Toledo on Saturday. Basically it was “blitz the safeties on every play–even a third and 33–and hope we don’t get torched.” They got torched. It’s the same thing they did last year against Toledo (didn’t work then) and earlier this year against Bowling Green (didn’t work then, either). I know they have four key defenders out. But come on…

The Irish want to go to a bowl game. Huh? Really?

Reason number 1,432 why the BCS doesn’t work. Ohio State, who wouldn’t stay within 35 points of USC on the field will jump them today to number two in the standings. Nice.

I could give a rat’s ass about the Cowboys-Patriots game last night. But apparently the end featured some hot man-on-man action between Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick.

John Sickels on Cubs prospect Jason Dubois.

Stewey Mandel admits it was him stalking Jim Tressel and Lynn Swann after Saturday’s Ohio State-Purdue game. Creepy.

Why didn’t the AMA’s pay tribute to Luther Vandross by having Billy Squier sing “The Stroke?”

I don’t know about you, but this really makes me want to go see “Bad Santa.” It sounds pretty good.

Who the hell would vote for Hillary? Anybody?

Who says there isn’t anything good on TV anymore?

The world’s greatest newspaper has the story of a human kangaroo. How…nice?