Winners and losers from the Chicago Bears’ Week 6 win: Jonathan Vilma’s inconsistent outing (again), Fox’s revenge storyline falls short and ‘cattywampus’

Did you disagree with Fox NFL analyst Jonathan Vilma late in the second quarter Sunday when he said that, as good as the Chicago Bears defense was, the Carolina Panthers' offense “had their number”?

No problem. Because by late in the third quarter, with the Bears en route to a 23-16 victory, Vilma was talking about how Carolina’s offense wasn’t getting the job done, as the only numbers that matter are on the scoreboard .

So, see? There was something for everyone.

Vilma is all of six games into his NFL TV career. Three have been Bears broadcasts, so Chicago-area viewers know him better than most. At the risk of being consistent, we’ll continue to say there’s no reason to think he won’t get better, but there’s also plenty of room for improvement.

Vilma has a good eye and can be insightful, so we’ll give him a pass on small mistakes for now. He was spot-on in criticizing Bears coach Matt Nagy for passing on third down in the final two minutes rather than managing the clock (“Run the ball, please, run the ball”).

Yet he also is capable of filling empty air with more empty air, as in: “If this is a hot start for Nick Foles, it’s going to be really good for the Bears all game long — if he can stay hot like that.”

Who knew?

“We rave about the Bears defense and deservedly so, but the Panthers have had their number so far,” Vilma said with the Bears up 7-3 and less than five minutes left in the second quarter. “I know (you are) saying Jon, ‘They’ve only put up three points,’ but look what’s going on. … Now it’s just a matter of punching it into the end zone, but they’ve done a good job offensively.”

The thing is, punching it into the end zone is kind of the point. If you’re not scoring, you’re not doing a good job offensively no matter how well you move the ball.

Vilma swung around to this with less than five minutes left in the third quarter, when Panthers coach Matt Rhule appeared upset with his offense.

“I can understand why he’s so mad,” Vilma said. “We can talk about the big plays that they’ve made, and (how) they move the ball up and down the field. Blah, blah, blah. The score is 13-6. When they’ve had opportunities, they didn’t capitalize on them. At the end of the day, they’re losing this game.”

Rare is the commentator who refers to his own earlier observations as “blah, blah, blah,” but dismissing them as “blah, blah, blah” wasn’t wrong.

Vilma ultimately concluded the Bears' defense was "playing lights-out football, creating turnovers, putting pressure on the quarterback. ... But if you look at the Panthers, the Panthers are slowly becoming a good team.”

Actually, the Panthers also are a work in progress.

Here are some other winners and losers from the Bears-Panthers game on Fox.

Winner: Cattywampus

Jonathan Vilma wasn’t the only Fox analyst to struggle with what to say about the Bears.

“I was looking for a word to kind of describe what they’re doing,” Tony Gonzalez said. “I don’t know what it is.”

He finally settled, improbably, on “cattywampus,” also sometimes spelled “catawampus,” which provoked teasing from the rest of the Fox studio crew.

“They are here. They’re there. They’re all over the place,” Gonzalez said of the word which can mean to be askew, untidy or awry while other definitions — depending on one’s source — reportedly include being savage and destructive, as well a fierce, feral imaginary animal.

This has been your vocabulary lesson for the NFL’s Week 6.

Loser: Mike Davis storyline from Fox

Panthers running back Mike Davis was cut by the Bears last year. Fox was so keen to play up how he was motivated by those who’ve written him off that both play-by-play announcer Kenny Albert and reporter Shannon Spake mentioned it within minutes of each other before kickoff.

And then pfft.

While Davis was coming off a career game vs. the Falcons, he managed an unremarkable 52 yards on 18 carries against the Bears, including a 1-yard touchdown push. He now has TDs in four successive games, but overall, this was nothing to write home about.

Winner: Meek Mill

Bears quarterback Nick Foles, who’s partial to Christian beats and country music, said Meek Mill’s “Dreams and Nightmares” got his toes tapping in the Club Dub victory celebration, not that the activist-rapper needed anyone’s endorsement.

Winner: The NFL’s 2004 draft class

Vilma was drafted 12th overall in 2004. So, apparently Fox thought it worth a graphic and brief discussion about how Larry Fitzgerald (third), Philip Rivers (fourth), Ben Roethlisberger (11th), Matt Schaub (90th) and Andy Lee (188th) are still playing in the NFL. None play for either the Bears or Panthers, but whatever.

Loser: NFL Sunday Ticket

If Fox is going to try to peddle the NFL’s “Sunday Ticket” package of games in its ticker, it should be labeled an advertisement. It should also be noted that NFL’s RedZone Channel is a far better pay-TV option for the casual fan who wants to see the best of what’s going on around the league live each Sunday.

Winner: Andrew Siciliano

Speaking of RedZone, a positive COVID-19 test kept Andrew Siciliano from hosting for the first time since its launch 15 years ago. Dan Hellie filled in for him on DirecTV, while Scott Hanson continued to hold down the fort on the RedZone available on other platforms.

Here’s hoping it was a false positive or, failing that, a speedy recovery for Siciliano, who logged early experience in the 1990s at Chicago’s late great WMAQ-AM.

Loser: Pass interference

A former linebacker, Vilma likes to ruminate about the ever-fluid NFL standards of what constitutes pass interference. It’s still unclear what should and shouldn’t be deemed a violation. But if an announcer is talking about it so much that he’s referring to it as “P.I.” to speed things along, the topic is coming up too much.

Winner: ESPN

The Rams loss to the 49ers on Sunday night dropped them to 4-1, but next week’s “Monday Night Football” matchup with the 5-1 Bears is the second best of the week after the Steelers (5-0) vs Titans (5-0).

If ESPN doubts it could have done worse, look no further than the “Thursday Night Football” demolition derby between the 1-5 Giants and 1-4-1 Eagles. That one could send football fans to the presidential debate.

Winner: The Minnesota Vikings

A seat in the press box for Sunday’s Falcons-Vikings game was reserved for Vaughn McClure, the Atlanta-based ESPN reporter and Chicago Tribune alumnus who died this week at age 48.

Notre Dame did the same for him on Saturday for its game against Louisville. On ESPN, Sam Ponder remembered him on “Sunday NFL Countdown."

———

©2020 the Chicago Tribune

Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.