Is Bears' Super Bowl window closing?

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Thursday, Sept. 8, 2011
Posted: 3:31 p.m.

By John Mullin
CSNChicago.com Bears InsiderFollow @CSNMoonMullin
Brian Urlacher interrupted the first question mid-thought during training camp when he sat down for an exclusive one-on-one with CSNChicago.com. Since hes been to a Super Bowl, two NFC Championship games, all kinds of Pro Bowls and such, what keeps him going?

Win the Super Bowl. Period, he declared. Its that simple.

It still is for the 33-year-old middle linebacker, who is savvy enough to read an offense and also a calendar.

We want to win now, he reiterated Thursday. Our window may be closing a bit; we are getting a little bit older. But

He indulged himself a touch of ironysarcasm, speaking with uncommon eloquence for someone with their tongue wedged so firmly in their cheek

We're still playing at a pretty high level, I think.

For as old as we are, we're still pretty decent, I guess.

But is the Bears Super Bowl window really closing?

Window-shopping

The easy answer lies in the 30-something linchpins of the defense; six of the starters are 30 or older, although not one of the backups is.

The Bears propped their Super Bowl window open a little wider in 2009 when they invested in Jay Cutler. They were within a touchdown of the Super Bowl last season, then went out in an abbreviated offseason and uprooted more than one-third (18 players) of their entire roster.

Indeed, do you know how many members of the Chicago Bears offense, starters or backups, are 30 or older?

One

Pretty decent, I guess

Since 2004, Lovie Smiths first as Bears coach, no team has scored more than 15 points (Packers, at Green Bay, 2009) in an opening game against the Bears. And that Green Bay game was the one in which the Bears lost Urlacher for the season with a wrist injury in the first half.

As good as the Bears were in 2010 defensively, Urlacher believes the difference in this team vs. that one is where it really matters:

Up front, he said immediately. I think we're good up front. Not only on defense, but on offense as well. Our line has played better, and I know preseason doesn't mean much, but we've got to take something out of it. I think they did a better job up front. Our defensive line is stacked. We go two-deep at every spot, and those guys get after it.

And it wouldnt be the time leading up to a season without the Bears being disrespected by pundits and experts. This year the Bears, who have had four winning seasons in the last six, find themselves picked below the Detroit Lions, who have had none in the last 10, in the NFC North by some.

We say this every year at this time, he said. It's the same thing; we're the underdogs again, that's the way it is every year. We seem to do decent at that role.

Then he went tongue-in-cheek again.

So we'll just do our best and go out there and try and give a couple teams a game this year. We'll do the best we can.

John "Moon" Mullin is CSNChicago.com's Bears Insider and appears regularly on Bears Postgame Live and Chicago Tribune Live. Follow Moon on Twitter for up-to-the-minute Bears information.

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