Matt Forte’s Place Among Chicago Bears Legends
The end of the 2015 NFL season could very well mean the end of an era in the Chicago Bears backfield. Veteran running back Matt Forte has completed his contract with the Bears and may have played his last game in the navy blue and burnt orange. With a young and explosive back in Jeremy Langford looking poised to take over duties, the 30-year-old Forte has suddenly become expendable for a team that is looking to build for the future. So with Forte’s Bears career seemingly in the rearview mirror, it’s time to take a look at where he stands in the long and storied history of Chicago Bear running backs.
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This exercise wouldn’t make a ton of sense if we were to review such an idea after a Bears wide receiver or quarterback completed their tenure with the team. The pool at those positions is not nearly as deep and the tradition not as storied. When football fans think of the Chicago Bears, they think of two positions, middle
linebacker and running back. They are positions as deep historically as any franchise has to offer. Sure, the Steelers have an impressive list of linebackers and the Cowboys can point to a number of top-flight quarterbacks. But no franchise can trot out hall of famer after hall of famer at a position like the Bears can at linebacker and running back.
Making a numbered list of the best running backs is somewhat of a frivolous effort. Obviously, Walter Payton would rank number one on that list with nobody close. But in the NFL, where injuries shorten careers, game styles change rapidly and expectations out of a given position are constantly shifting, it seems the variables are so wide that there is little way to nail down if Matt Forte is a better player than, say, Bronko Nagurski. But one thing I can say with the utmost certainty is that Forte easily ranks in the top five Bears running backs of all time. And one can easily argue that other than Payton and Gale Sayers, Forte has no equal.
Before you start shouting about the virtues of Neil Anderson, Red Grange and Willie Galimore, let’s look at the pure numbers for a moment. When it comes to all-purpose yards, Matt Forte ranks second in franchise history. Though Payton’s 21,264 all-purpose yards blows away Forte’s 12,718, that number dwarfs 3rd place
holder Neil Anderson’s 8,929 by nearly four thousand yards. Forte is 2nd all-time in rushing yards, 4th all-time in rushing touchdowns, 2nd all-time in receptions, 6th in receiving yards. And though he’s all the way down at 19th all-time in receiving touchdowns, at 19 for his career he had four more than Payton.
Forte never possessed the aesthetically pleasing style that Sayers and Payton became known for, but when it comes to being a smart, reliable and consistent all around football player, few can match him. The 2008 second round pick out of Tulane has been able to do it all throughout his eight seasons with the Bears. At his best he could run with power and speed. He could block as well as any back in the league and catch the ball with the grace of a wide receiver.
He has done all this with few, if any, high quality offensive linemen in front of him. He’s done this with quarterback play that has been inconsistent throughout his tenure. He’s done this with offensive coordinator after offensive coordinator. He’s done it through three different head coaches. He’s done it as a member of just one team that’s been good enough for a playoff birth. When you look at everything that’s been not working around him, it’s hard to stop from wondering if he’d played with an offense like the “best show on turf” Rams, if his numbers would look a little more like Marshall Faulk than a poor man’s version of the hall of famer.
Through all this adversity around him, Matt Forte has been the consummate professional. Never one to point the finger or show his frustration, Forte has been everything we want out of our star athletes: humble, appreciative and dedicated. It’s a shame that we can’t watch our favorite players start and end their career with the same team, but sports are business and it’s traditionally been bad business to hand out big money to running backs on the other side of 30. The Bears have a job to do and that’s bringing a winner back to the lakefront. Unfortunately, that likely means saying goodbye to a guy who surprised a lot of us and became a Chicago Bears legend.