Oct. 27--FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- There were blank stares, then sighs of disbelief. Frustrated reflections accompanied by hard swallows.
All around the visiting locker room at Gillette Stadium on Sunday evening, the Bears seemed dazed by the 51-23 pummeling the Patriots had given them.
Players acknowledged the sting, the humiliation. And when asked to recount the end of Sunday's first half, a stretch in which a 10-point deficit ballooned to 31 in a span of 57 seconds, the reactions told the tale of a once-hopeful season spiraling into a state of emptiness.
Left tackle Jermon Bushrod sat in front of his locker and shook his head, seemingly growing dizzier just thinking about the end of Sunday's first half.
The offensive breakdowns. The penalties. The Tom Brady fireworks show.
"It's hard to describe," Bushrod said. "It was like if you blinked too long, you were buried. ... Honestly, I've never been a part of anything like that. I've seen it happen to other teams. But when it happens to you, it's like 'Man.' You can't even do that kind of stuff on a video game."
Willie Young's eyes widened, as if he had been asked to recount a gnarly car wreck.
"It happened fast," Young said. "It came as fast as (Brady) was getting rid of the ball."
Added fellow defensive end Jared Allen of the Patriots' rapid scoring spree: "Goodness. I didn't know that was humanly possible.
It would take a Tolstoy-sized tome to catalog all the errors the Bears made Sunday. Heck, just chronicling the breakdowns from those final 3 minutes of the first half requires a significant time investment.
With 5 minutes, 32 seconds left before halftime, Jay Cutler hit Matt Forte for a 25-yard touchdown pass that pulled the Bears within 17-7. A staggered team at least appeared to be clawing for new life.
And then?
And then Patriots quarterback Tom Brady led a 10-play, 80-yard touchdown drive that ended with a 2-yard pass to Rob Gronkowski.
And then the Bears offense went three-and-out on a series that not only lasted less than 30 seconds but also included a sack of Cutler and an unnecessary-roughness penalty on right guard Kyle Long.
And then Julian Edelman returned a punt 42 yards to the Bears' 19 with a 10-yard penalty on Trevor Scott tacked on.
And then Brady immediately threw another touchdown, this one to Brandon LaFell, who was being covered by undrafted rookie cornerback Al Louis-Jean.
And then Cutler got sacked again and lost a fumble, which Patriots end Rob Ninkovich scooped up and returned 15 yards for a touchdown.
From 17-7 to 38-17. Just like that.
"It felt good at halftime," Brady said. "Everything was working."
It was only the fourth time in NFL history a team had scored 21 points in less than a minute, an onslaught Bears coach Marc Trestman said "was our own doing."
"Agonizing," Cutler added.
There's little use detailing the rest of Sunday's action. It all points back to a near-unanimous verdict after eight games -- that these Bears are a highly flawed team lacking confidence, consistency and enough quality depth.
And now they're headed for a full week off, left to digest how badly an upper-echelon team took them apart Sunday -- sometimes carefully and methodically like a bomb squad technician disassembling explosives, sometimes like a sugared-up 10-year-old destroying a birthday party pinata.
The Patriots defense forced the Bears to punt on their first three possessions, with the Bears not running their first play in New England territory until 7:05 remained before halftime.
Brady, meanwhile, led the Patriots to scores on their first six drives, rang up 354 passing yards for the day and, on 35 throws, wound up with as many TD passes (five) as he had incompletions.
Gronkowski caught nine balls for 149 yards and three scores and didn't play the last quarter and a half.
One team that hopes to become a perennial playoff team watched another that has already reached that status and came away sobered by the comparisons.
And if the football gods needed to drive their reality check home, they offered this. With 12:54 left in the third quarter, Brady threw his fifth touchdown pass of the day, a 46-yarder to Gronkowski. The quarterback's reaction? He jogged to the sideline, offered some quick congratulations to his tight end, then went back to talk with coaches.
In the fourth quarter, meanwhile, defensive end Lamarr Houston finally recorded his first sack as a Bear -- with 3:21 left in his eighth game with the team. That came against rookie quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, with the Bears down 25 points in garbage time.
Houston's reaction? He skipped and bounced and delivered a celebration so animated that he jumped and landed awkwardly on his right knee.
Houston crumpled to the ground in obvious pain and had to be carted from the sideline to the locker room, left to consider the possibility that his season was over. Just like that.
At 3-5, the Bears are in a similar boat.
dwiederer@tribune.com
Twitter @danwiederer
