Shaking my Optimism
This defeat was just awful. Wow, was this bad. With a few minutes to go, and the Bears down 34-3, in my best "eternal optimist" mode, I said something like "Well, with 2-point conversions, we're only down by 4 scores".
But really, unless I'm quoting President Lincoln, I shouldn't ever be saying "four score'.
This was amazingly bad. Especially when you consider that it wasn't amazingly bad.
It's not like the Bears were fumbling and throwing interceptions all day. Or penalizing themselves into oblivion. No, they just plain played poorly. Consistently poorly. All phases of the game.
Which is what the Lions do. Or the Bengals. Or the 49ers. A playoff-bound team might be expected to have a fumbling, interception-laden, penalty-intensive off-game once in a year. But to not score, not stop scores, not get in good field position, not keep your offense on the field, and all without having some jaw-dropping "I can't believe they did that" moment. It's hard to just explain away. If it were a mistake-fest, you might feel that this could be corrected easily. But I don't think it can.
The Bears-hater, Joe Buck, who announced the slaughter, suggested that the Bears have it easy next week with the St. Louis Rams. And while it's true that the Rams have not played well this year, and a good team should expect to beat them, I don't know that my Bears today should expect to beat them. They really need to fix themselves. I hope they can.
I promise I'll be more optimistic in a couple of days. This one was hard.
CHILI DAN
