PHILADELPHIA — Think of everything this game was supposed to be for the Bears.
In August, when all of Chicago lived in the alternate reality of this team being a Super Bowl contender, the midseason game against the Eagles was going to be just another stop on the worldwide victory tour. They’d avenge their playoff loss and march along.
After rampant deterioration, it was recently reframed as exactly the type of do-or-die moment that could spark the Bears back to life. On the verge of total collapse, they’d grit their teeth and save the season.
Instead, it was pure misery. The Bears made a late push, but it wasn’t enough to make up for an otherwise disastrous afternoon and they fell 22-14 at Lincoln Financial Field.
They scored two touchdowns in the second half and got the ball back with a chance to drive for the lead with 10 minutes left, but the Eagles shut them down and powered through a long drive to drain the clock into the final minute before kicking a field goal.
The Bears experienced a familiar feeling of running into an opponent that repeatedly outwitted and outmatched them. The Eagles minimized Khalil Mack, found plenty of holes in the star-studded secondary and didn’t give the Bears’ offense an inch.
That last part was almost literal in the first half.
It reached a point where punting on third down wouldn’t have seemed ludicrous. Punting on first down would’ve been merciful to everyone watching.
In a season when the Bears’ offense has repeatedly hit what it believed to be rock bottom only to find there was still room to fall, they played their worst first half in 40 years.
They trudged to the locker room at halftime down 12-0 after a net of 9 yards on 20 plays. They went three-and-out five times on six possessions, and the deepest downfield they advanced was their own 41.
They only broke zero thanks to a frantic-but-fruitless scramble in the final minute. That stretch included a 6-yard pass from Mitch Trubisky to Tarik Cohen, which was their longest play to that point.
Trubisky completed 6 of 13 passes for 24 yards and a 53 passer rating. He finished with 10 complete passes.
The upside for the Bears was that their defense was merely terrible, not historically terrible.
The Eagles went on long field-goal drives the first two times they got the ball and struck for a touchdown on their third possession. They did not punt until 3:14 left in the second quarter and closed the half at 202 yards.
Meanwhile, the defensive failures were abundant and assorted.
Ex-Bear Jordan Howard did as he pleased and ripped them for 37 yards on nine carries, Carson Wentz was just shy of 100 in passer rating and the defensive line self-sabotaged with four neutral-zone infractions, a pass interference and a late hit on the quarterback that negated what would’ve been a fourth-and-1 stop.
That’s not good enough to beat bad teams, let alone decent ones like the Eagles.
At 3-5, the Bears are out of time to make anything meaningful out of this season. Getting to .500 by the end of it seems overly ambitious. This is a far fall from 12-4 and winning the division in 2018.
The loss to the Eagles should be last one necessary to compel even the optimists to accept that this season is already shot with two months left. It’s nothing near what the Bears expected.
