By Brad BiggsYou are going to have to watch an awful lot of football to see a kicker called for intentional grounding again.
That is what happened when the Bears' Robbie Gould wound up with the ball on a 38-yard field goal attempt that was botched Saturday night when fill-in long snapper Desmond Clark bounced the snap to holder Brad Maynard. Gould just threw the ball away, resulting in a 14-yard penalty.
Clark botched the first two snaps for kicks, one on an extra point, and was also off on a punt snap as he was forced into duty with Pat Mannelly sidelined with a neck stinger suffered last week at San Diego. Mannelly did not practice in Bourbonnais this past week, so the Bears had to know they were turning to their veteran tight end, who has been the emergency snapper for several years but had never tried it during a game.
Photo: Robbie Gould lets his pass fly. (Chris Sweda/Tribune)
"Certainly makes us appreciate Pat a lot more," said Maynard of his partner for the last nine seasons. "Snapping is not easy. We saw that tonight. Dez does a great job for us in practice and we had confidence in him coming in. I haven't lost confidence in him really if he had to get out there. It was his first time ever doing it.
"It's hard. It's a different thing. He's playing reps and then he's expected to go snap. You go from a lot of adrenaline to, `I got it and I need to relax now.' It's tough."
The alternative would have been for the Bears to release the 80th player on the rostser and sign a long snapper this week for the game so they could be prepared for the game. It would have given special teams coordinator Dave Toub an opportunity to evaluate a street free agent in the event an emergency arises.
"That's not for me to decide," Maynard said. "We were comfortable with Dez and obviously they made the decision to go with him. I would be comfortable going with him next week. I think it's a learning experience for him."
The upside, of course, is that if Mannelly is injured in a regular-season game and cannot continue, Clark now has live game experience, even if it's preseason action.
"For me tonight, in the first couple snaps I just had to trust my technique and not try to be perfect," Clark said. "I was just trying to do everything absolutely perfect instead of just doing what I have been doing for the last six years.
"If I had to go in there again, I would put money on myself that the job would get done."
Clark thought he was headed to the 2006 Pro Bowl as a long snapper. The NFL informed him that he was being selected as a need player for the all-star game. Then, the league changed its mind and sent Philadelphia's Mike Bartrum instead. Clark received some swag from the game because of the league's mistake. If he didn't have a true appreciation for the job now, he certainly does now.
"Offense, defense, if you mess up you've got 10 other guys out there to
make up for you," he said. "But if you snap a ball bad to the punter or
bad to the holder, it's all on you. There is a lot of pressure on the
long snapper to do that so, yeah, he does have a tough job."
Clark deserves a pass on his performance. He never practiced snapping so what are we to expect? The Bears coaching staff, on the other hand, deserve a head slap. If Clark has been in the depth chart for "several years" and NEVER made a long snap in any preseason game, whose fault is that? Of course having Mannely, one of the best in the biz makes it easy to overlook the position but the brain trust is supposed to be prepared for anything. So Bears!
Please note: getting a temporary long-snapper would have cost the McCaskey family MONEY.
And ol' Mike is like his granddad. He tosses nickels around like they're manhole covers (Ditka)
This reeks of cheap. Par for the course for the Bears.
I bet they have "Race For The Nickel" contests over the holidays.