CINCINNATI -- Tell me again why the Chicago Bears are a playoff team now that they have Pro Bowl quarterback Jay Cutler. I have trouble remembering in the aftermath of that 45-10 beatdown by Cincinnati.
Cutler was supposed to be the panacea for what was wrong with the Bears, which was quarterbacking. Only he's not, and he's not because the Bears have lost their identity. Once they were a tough, mean, physical bunch of football players who beat you with good running backs and better defense.
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| 'The Chicago Bears should never lose a game like that,' Lovie Smith says. (Getty Images) |
At least they couldn't stop the Bengals, and pass the stat sheet, please. Cincinnati didn't just wallop these guys; it destroyed them -- producing touchdowns on its first four possessions, each one 63 yards or longer, and scoring on its first seven. Meanwhile, quarterback Carson Palmer threw five touchdown passes before sitting down after three quarters, and Cedric Benson -- yep, the back the Bears cut last year -- ran over, around and through the Bears defense for a career-high 189 yards.
Anyway, the point is that Chicago is beginning to take this Second City thing a little too literally. The Bears couldn't beat Atlanta last week because they screwed up inside the red zone, and they couldn't beat Cincinnati on Sunday because they stunk. Pure and simple, they stunk. They couldn't block. They couldn't tackle. They couldn't throw. They couldn't run. They couldn't defend the pass or the run, and when they finally did hit someone it was the punter.
Ooops.
"The Chicago Bears should never lose a game like that," coach Lovie Smith said.
Yeah, well, they did. I know everyone's entitled to the occasional stinker, but this wasn't a bad loss; this was a disgrace. The only thing that could help the Bears would be drawing someone like, say, oh, Cleveland on the schedule next, which is exactly whom they do draw. But don't be misled. A victory over the Browns next Sunday means next to nothing. Almost everyone beats Cleveland. The Bears must overcome opponents of consequence, and they had their chance here.
Instead, they wound up as road kill.
"It's really embarrassing," Cutler said. "I'm embarrassed, and I think everyone in that locker room is embarrassed. We're a better team than what we showed out there. We just have to get back and start playing better football."
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But that's my point. How do you get back to better football with Cutler throwing the ball over the lot and your running backs serving as nothing more than hood ornaments? A year ago, the Bears were effective with Matt Forte running the ball. Yeah, I know they ranked 24th overall, but Forte was the weapon you had to counter, with the then-rookie leading the Bears in touchdowns and yards and leading the NFL in first downs.
Ah, those were the days.
Now, Forte can't run, can't score and can't do much of anything but watch Cutler throw another pass to Devin Hester or Johnny Knox or Greg Olsen. That is not the personality of the Chicago Bears -- or that was not their personality -- but those are the Bears we have now.
On their first drive Sunday they had Forte run four times; he carried twice the rest of the game, and don't tell me the situations dictated it. I don't care if you're down 14-0, which the Bears were after two Cincinnati series, you don't suddenly become Air Coryell. But the Bears did, and they suffered the consequences. Cutler had a sack and fumble on the next series. Hester fumbled away the ball on the following series. Then Cutler threw the first of three interceptions.
I'm sorry, but that is not Bears football.
"It's embarrassing to come out and play like that," defensive end Alex Brown said. "We represent the Chicago Bears, and we shouldn't play like that. They did whatever they wanted to."
What's surprising about that is the Bears said later that nothing Cincinnati did on offense surprised them. The Bengals ran the same patterns. They called the same runs. They showed the same tendencies. The only difference was how the Bears responded. Basically, they didn't. In fact, they were so atrocious that the first two Cincinnati drives looked more like 7-on-7 drills.
Cincinnati did whatever it wanted, whenever it wanted, and that's not Bears football, either. But I don't know what Bears football is anymore, and I wonder if the Bears themselves do. They have a quarterback with a big arm who looks good on some days, not so good on others and has yet to prove he can win anything.
Yet they staked their future to him, and it seems to have screwed up their psyche. Yeah, I know they hadn't surrendered more than 24 points in any game prior to Sunday, but look at their last three performances, and you find 90 points by opponents. That is not a good sign, especially with the worst hammering being the most recent.
"We all saw what happened out there," Smith said. "It was a total breakdown by us, but you move on."
Well, good luck because the Bears play in the same division with Minnesota and Green Bay. They opened the season with the Packers and lost. Cutler threw four interceptions. Draw your own conclusions. I've drawn mine, and they were reinforced here.
Now look at Cincinnati. The Bengals are the team the Bears should be but aren't. They have a perfect blend of pass and run, with Benson the effective back who makes Palmer and the passing game go. Not only does Benson run to daylight; he runs again and again and again, with the Bengals working him a season high 37 times Sunday.
"It all starts up front with the run game," Palmer said.
Precisely. It used to start there in Chicago. Not anymore. And the Bears are suffering the consequences.
