Jan. 04--Frustration finally boiled over inside Jay Cutler when the finality of a trying season and a 24-20 loss to the Lions hit him Sunday about the same time pass rusher Ziggy Ansah did.
Cutler shoved Ansah on the ground after throwing his third interception of the game, a dagger safety Glover Quin picked off with 1:51 left that deprived the Bears of a fourth-quarter comeback. An agitated Ansah got up to go facemask to facemask with Cutler before offensive tackle Kyle Long intervened.
"There were some choice things said and it escalated and then it de-escalated," Cutler said.
At least this year, when the Bears went down fighting, it wasn't among themselves.
In a season of small consolations, that was the last one for the Bears as they said goodbye in front of 50,607 gluttons for punishment who showed up. The Bears finished 6-10, in last place in the NFC North but among the league leaders in moral victories, which can't matter in any self-respecting football city.
For goodness' sake, Northwestern won as many games at Soldier Field this season as the Bears, whose 1-7 home record set a franchise record for futility on the lakefront.
"There's good, bad and really bad, and that falls under the really bad category," Long said.
Their 1-5 record in the division hardly made anybody beam over the ballyhooed chemistry and camaraderie in the locker room. Togetherness goes only so far in a league defined by talent, which could be the epitaph of the 2015 Bears.
"It'll get better," John Fox said.
Based on what, Coach?
"The kind of guys we've got, the way they go about it, the way we're going to play football," Fox said. "We need a couple pieces. We aren't real far (away). The core of our team is going to be with that group in there."
Like it or not, that group includes Cutler, who completed the most consistent season of his Bears tenure with the inconsistency that confounds critics. The first pick came on a deflection in the end zone of an ill-advised throw and the second when his arm was hit releasing the ball.
By the time Ansah's pressure affected Cutler's third interception, sports-talk stations in town probably had full phone lines hoping to discuss whether the Bears should draft California's Jared Goff or Michigan State's Connor Cook in the first round.
Fox sounded like a guy who will make the debate moot.
"I'm excited about working with him," Fox said of Cutler. "I get to watch what they do every day, and I was very proud of his season."
As Fox should be. Cutler responded to a career crossroads by proving himself coachable, small but not insignificant progress for one of Chicago's most polarizing athletes. Finding middle ground represented taking a step up. Cutler's ninth interception of 2015 came in Sunday's first quarter, a big improvement from 2014, when pick No. 9 came in Week 4.
Asked postgame if he entered the season with something to prove, Cutler demonstrated a noticeable perspective that often comes with age. He reserved his emotion for pondering life without Matt Forte but showed none addressing his own situation.
"It's never really that personal for me," Cutler said. "I want to win football games. I want to play well. It's not a personal vendetta against whoever. It's never reached that level with me."
Those who think the Bears won't reach the next level until ridding themselves of Cutler seldom offer a practical alternative. In a league in which journeyman quarterbacks Josh Freeman and Ryan Mallett started in Week 17, Cutler gives the Bears one fewer question to answer.
Bigger offseason problems loom than Cutler, whose leading wide receiver this year, Alshon Jeffery, caught only 54 passes. His wide receiving corps Sunday consisted of Deonte Thompson, Josh Bellamy, Marc Mariani and Cameron Meredith -- a foursome nobody ever considered nicknaming.
"I don't think anybody at the start of the season would have pegged them as our four at the end of the season," Cutler said. "They fought their butts off."
Now it's time for general manager Ryan Pace to roll up his sleeves. A defense that went yet another game without taking the ball away desperately needs help so that coordinator Vic Fangio isn't the unit's most indispensable piece. The offense figures to need a new leader if coordinator Adam Gase becomes a head coach, as many expect. An offensive line that fits the definition of makeshift requires another makeover, likely two new starters. Playmakers on both sides of the ball are musts.
Only 19 of the Bears' 46 active players against the Lions were under contract at the end of the 2014 season, and Pace's approach to the roster must be just as ruthless.
"My experience has been that people live up or down to expectations," Fox said. "If you expect a lot, you get a lot."
Chicago must expect more from the Bears in the second season of Pace and Fox, whose honeymoon ended around 3 p.m. Sunday.
dhaugh@tribpub.com
