Bear Digest

Unique All Quarter Century team lets Lovie Smith era Bears take a bow

Analysis: ESPN's all quarter century team recognizes a handful of former Chicago Bears including one who rarely gets mentioned.
Gene Chamberlain|
Lovie Smith's former Bears special teams coordinator Dave Toub, now with Kansas City, is honored on an all 25-year NFL team.
Lovie Smith's former Bears special teams coordinator Dave Toub, now with Kansas City, is honored on an all 25-year NFL team. | Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

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Chicago Bears

A quarter of a century of football is a long time to consider the accomplishments of great players but ESPN's Seth Walder and Aaron Schatz did with their NFL All Quarter Century team.

They put together an excellent group. These players can always be debated but the Bears are represented with two obvious Hall of Fame players in Brian Urlacher and Devin Hester, plus a few others who played in Chicago after making a name for themselves elsewhere in Hall of Famers Julius Peppers and Jared Allen.

No one could dispute Urlacher's spot as the modern, athletic linebacker gifted with speed and reach to the extent he could played safety in college at 6-foot-4, 258. Hester, meanwhile, returned with more success than any one in history.

Bears fans might find arguments for center Olin Kreutz or cornerback Charles Tillman but it's tough for Peanut in such debates as he made only two Pro Bowls.

As for Kreutz, there was only one center put on the team and that was Jason Kelce. If there had been another, the former Bears great also deserved consideration but would have had some stiff competition from Alex Mack, Nick Mangold, Maurkice Pouncey, Kevin Mawae and others. They put more than one left guard, left tackle, right guard and right tackle on this team but only one center. Why?

Either way, this team has an exclamation point on it lacking by many other such teams.

ESPN triumphs here by putting a coaching staff on it, as well. They named a head coach and three coordinators.

The former coordinator who should have Bears fans standing and applauding is special teams coordinator, Dave Toub.

Toub might be Kansas City's coordinator but from 2004-2012 he did it for the Bears and is the coordinator responsible for guiding Hester and his blockers, not to mention kicker Robbie Gould.

"Toub holds one of the most impressive streaks a coach can have," ESPN's Seth Walder wrote. "He coordinated a top-five special teams unit in every season from 2006 (when ESPN's efficiency ratings began) to 2017, including the postseason."

The streak didn't end until Toub's special teams finished sixth in 2018.

Toub truly made the "third phase," as Lovie Smith would call special teams, into a force for winning games, when paired with Urlacher's defense. They could overcome and underachieving offense.

The game best known as "They are who we thought they were," is the perfect example of how Toub's guys could make the difference in a game.

Toub's efforts included a Nate Vasher 108-yard missed field goal return, a 109-yard Hester missed field goal return, Johnny Knox's TD return on the same fake punt return used by the Bears this past season against Green Bay for a TD by Josh Blackwell.

And then there was Hester's brilliance.

It's still a major gaffe on the part of the NFL that Toub never got the chance to be a head coach. He obviously made an impact on the game, though, as ESPN has acknowledged.

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.