Desperation is setting in for the Bears.
Or maybe despair.
Those Super Bowl aspirations have fizzled, and the conversation pivots to whether they can grind out enough wins merely to make the playoffs. Even that seems like a reach after an absolute dud against the Saints. Coming off their bye week and facing an opponent that was missing its best two players, the Bears fell flat in a 36-25 loss at Soldier Field.
The Saints led 36-10 until the final three minutes, when the Bears scrambled for a touchdown, onside kick recovery and another touchdown to make the final score slightly less humiliating.
No one is fooled by that and no one is fooled by the Bears anymore. This is the rock bottom of the Matt Nagy era — they hope it is, at least.
Nagy is relentlessly optimistic, but even he can’t put a silver lining on a season marked by sluggish losses and unimpressive wins. And he senses the negativity closing in like a storm.
In response to a question about the feeble running game, he veered into a speech about the broader danger he fears.
“One thing, as Negative Nelly as this will be at 3-3 for us right now — I get it,” he said in an unusual post-game press conference that ranged from flummoxed to irritated to upbeat. “I’m the one that’s gonna have to answer to y’all all the time about the negativity of what’s going on. Got it.
“But we need to stay together. We’re not gonna let anybody around here pull us apart. I promise you that. We will come together with answers and, with every week that goes by, we do need to know that time is of the essence. But being 3-3—Here’s what I’ll tell them. You ready? I’ll say, ‘Horse blinders and earmuffs.’ Don’t listen to anything outside, because right now it’s not gonna be good, you know?
“What happens is people from the outside pull you down, and the last thing that anybody’s gonna do, whether it’s you guys or anybody else outside, is you’re not pulling us down. We’re gonna be positive and we’re gonna fight through it because that’s what winning teams do and that’s what positive people do.”
Keep in mind this speech is coming after six games. It’s this bad, this early.
Nagy might want to skip the rest of this, because as both a point of fact and big-picture observation, this is not a winning team.
The sight of players swaggering into Bourbonnais openly talking Super Bowl feels like another world after watching this meager offense stagger to three-and-outs.
Consider that the Bears would have to go 7-3 the rest of the way just to reach 10 wins. There’s no evidence they’re capable of that.
The very best they’ve looked was in a 16-6 win over the Vikings last month, when Mitch Trubisky got hurt and the defense was overwhelming.
That defense has been leaky the last two weeks, as the Saints and Raiders put up the two highest-yardage totals in regulation of the last two seasons against the Bears.
The offense was worse.
Two weeks of self-scouting, retooling and wearing out dry erase boards in Halas Hall got Nagy nowhere. And it has hit a point where no one can claim that getting Trubisky back on the field is helpful.
The offense’s numbers were nauseating, and Trubisky was as bad as ever. Before the late frenzy, he was 26 of 44 for 187 yards and a 69 passer rating.
If that sounds bad, get a load of the running attack. Is attack the right word? The Bears ran for 17 yards.
“You can’t run for 17 yards in the NFL and think you’re going to win a game, you know?” Nagy said. “You should get 17 yards on one run play.”
Nagy lamented the Bears’ failure to ignite the running game early, but he calls the plays. They ran five times in the first half.
What possible excuse do the Bears have for being unable to run when they have a mobile quarterback, a well paid offensive line and highly touted running backs? Nagy has to be able to explain this.
“I would love to,” he said. “I would. I wish I... I would love to. You’re right. But I don’t know what to tell you.”
There’s a lot the Bears don’t know right now. The only certainty is that this season has already gone wildly off track.
