Heartbreak escape: Bears looking to bounce back against Falcons
Lovie Smith has selective memory when it comes to last season’s gut-wrenching 22-20 Bears loss at Atlanta.
“What happened last year? What game?” Smith said. “It’s about this year, and we are playing a good 2009 Atlanta team. We are really not talking a lot about what happened last year.”
Bears receiver and special teams performer Rashied Davis, on the other hand, can’t get that heartbreaking loss out of his mind, especially since the Bears finished the season one win shy of making the playoffs.
Davis caught what he believed to be the winning 17-yard touchdown pass from Kyle Orton with 11 seconds remaining at the Georgia Dome.
But Atlanta had time to rebound with a 26-yard pass from Matt Ryan to Michael Jenkins to set up Jason Elam’s winning 48-yard field goal.
“What if? ... If I had made the winning catch, I would have been on the front page of the Tribune,” Davis said. “But since I didn’t, I was on the back page [actually, it was Page 5]. There are a lot of circumstances beyond your control.”
Those circumstances included a squib kick from Robbie Gould on the ensuing kickoff that carried only to the Atlanta 34-yard line. Harry Douglas picked it up and ran 10 yards to the 44.
“What was supposed to happen on the squib was that we were supposed to kick the squib kickoff deep,” Davis said. “It didn’t get deep. We came down and made the tackle, but we gave up a good amount of yardage. Basically, they made a play. One of their guys picked it up and made a play.”
As time expired, Elam kicked the field goal to send the Bears home hard-luck losers.
“It was kind of sickening on the flight home. But what can you do?” said Davis, who was also on the field for the squib kick and the attempt to block Elam’s game-winner.
“We still talk about the last 11 seconds on the clock and how we lost that game,” Devin Hester said. “It’s a bitter taste in the back of our throats. We don’t want to have that feeling again. We are going to take this week and prepare for it and hopefully come out with a ‘W.’
“We already looked at [last year’s Atlanta video], and I am pretty sure everybody on the team has. It’s a great motivating factor to start fast and finish strong.”
The Falcons (3-1) are coming off a convincing 45-10 victory over San Francisco.
“Everything counts. Nothing can be taken for granted,” Davis said. “You think it’s a simple squib kick. You think it’s a simple coverage play.
“It just doesn’t work out that way all of the time. Sometimes it goes opposite, so you really have to be focused in on the small things.”
Veteran Bears punter Brad Maynard says it will be business as usual for him this week.
“I don’t think any game changes for us as a unit,” he said. “We’re out to be the best every week. We focus on doing our job. So this week will be no different.”
Smith insists no small detail will be overlooked in preparation for the Falcons, especially when it comes to assignments and calls by special teams coach Dave Toub.
“We have a game plan going in, if we are going to fake or something like that,” Smith said. “All of those calls go through me. But we are on the same page with most of that stuff.”
