Dec. 04--The ball had just spiraled into Alshon Jeffery's hands when ESPN color analyst Jon Gruden let out a stream of consciousness that summarized an entire night.
"You've got to be kidding me," Gruden bellowed, still trying to process the circus catch Jeffery had made -- amid two Cowboys defenders, on a tiny wedge of green grass in the back right corner of Soldier Field's south end zone.
Both feet down.
Twenty-five yards, touchdown.
"That's an impossible catch," Gruden declared.
There it was, an exclamation point for the Bears' offense on a December night that sent the hope quotient in Chicago skyrocketing last season.
It's not just that Jeffery's score on a high-arcing pass from quarterback Josh McCown completed a purposeful drive to close the first half -- five plays, 60 yards, all three timeouts used, providing a 24-14 lead with 10 seconds left. And it's not just that the Bears scored 10 points in the final two minutes before halftime.
More than anything, coach Marc Trestman's offense had found the groove that all NFL teams seek, playing with a contagious blend of efficiency, cohesion and swagger. Both before and after Jeffery's touchdown, the Bears rolled, piling up a Trestman-era best 490 yards in a 45-28 triumph.
Left tackle Jermon Bushrod sat at his locker stall this week recalling the Bears' belief that they could do anything they wanted.
"We were just rolling," Bushrod said. "Everything the coaches called we were able to make money on it."
The memory seemed distant.
Nearly a year later, the Bears are headed back into another December game against the Cowboys -- coincidentally in Week 14 again, in prime time, at Soldier Field. Only now, a year after Trestman's approval rating as an offensive mastermind ballooned, the coach finds himself under fire, his job security in question and his play-calling being skewered.
A year after appearing unstoppable against the Cowboys, the Bears' offense is in crisis.
Trestman acknowledged this week that he spent time reviewing last year's blowout of the Cowboys in a search for nuggets that might aid this week's game plan. And as he rattled through a handful of specific plays from that victory, one almost could picture the studious coach spending time alone with that game footage, watching it with a combination of frustration and nostalgia, still trying to figure why this year's offense hasn't come close to equaling last season's.
The Bears' yards per game average has plunged -- from 381.4 in 2013 to 340.1 now.
Their scoring has dropped even more dramatically -- from 27.8 points per game to 21.1.
The eruption last December against the Cowboys was the third of four consecutive games in which the Bears totaled at least 400 yards. This season, they have had four 400-yard outputs all season with the offense's progress interrupted by injuries, plagued by penalties and torpedoed by turnovers.
A year ago, that regression didn't seem to be in the forecast.
Ask participants from last season's Bears-Cowboys game for their recollections and most immediately will point to the frigid temperatures -- a wind chill of 9 degrees below zero at kickoff. But the next most striking element of the night was the heat the Bears' offense emitted.
Eight drives, eight scores before a McCown kneel down ended things.
Five players scored touchdowns.
Only one player, center Roberto Garza, committed a penalty (two).
No turnovers. One sack allowed.
Matt Forte had 102 yards rushing. Brandon Marshall added 100 yards receiving.
The Bears converted eight of 11 third-down opportunities. The Cowboys had no answers.
"I just remember looking at the film and it seemed like everything was working," Bears right guard Kyle Long said.
With starting quarterback Jay Cutler missing his fifth game of the season, McCown played with total comfort and made decisive reads. In turn, his receivers sprung open on time.
On 69 offensive plays, the Bears threw 36 passes with one sack, ran the ball 32 times and averaged 7.1 yards per play.
"They had good balance throughout the game," Cowboys coach Jason Garrett recalled Tuesday, a sentiment Cutler and Bears offensive coordinator Aaron Kromer echoed.
That focus on balance takes on greater relevance this week with the Bears coming off a 34-17 loss in Detroit in which they ran the ball only eight times on 59 plays.
So maybe there are reminders in the Week 14 tape of a year ago -- on an opening drive in which the Bears went 78 yards to the end zone with six runs and six passes.
Perhaps inspiration can be pulled from a second-half in which Trestman called Forte's number a dozen times with the workhorse back grinding the Cowboys down.
Tight end Martellus Bennett longs for the offense to be harmonizing again like it was that night.
"It's really just finding the flow," Bennett said. "Sometimes we have good flow to our offense and sometimes we don't. It's like trying to make music. If the drummer's off, then the guitarist sounds like he's off. So we have to make sure everyone is making the same type of music while we're out there.
"If it's hip-hop today, let's make hip-hop. If it's rock 'n' roll, let's do rock 'n' roll. We can't have one guy playing jazz and another guy doing hip-hop and another guy doing classical Beethoven."
Too often this season, the Bears have functioned like a middle school orchestra, out of sync and out of tune. They will push to rectify those issues again Thursday night.
At this point, however, an offense that once seemed headed for center stage is looking to avoid having its act canceled altogether.
dwiederer@tribpub.com
Twitter @danwiederer
