Are we to believe that a high first-round draft pick and $122.2 million in salary cap space can cure what ailed the Bears on Sunday?
Those riches will have to take care of a terrible defense, a bad offense line, a thin receiving corps and whatever else I’m missing, which might be a lot because my hands are still covering my eyes. Tell me when it’s safe to look.
You’d have to be incredibly gullible to think things are looking up after the Bears’ 41-10 loss to a decent Detroit team. It’s one thing to buy into the future when your team is losing close games and Justin Fields is putting on a show. It’s another when your team gives up points at will and Fields looks ready to give up the ghost play after play, thanks to that bad offensive line.
There are so many holes to fill that improvements won’t come as quickly as most folks thought. That’s what Sunday showed.
You might look on it as one loss among many, the ninth in a row, a franchise record. I see a team that was out of its league against a .500 team. I see a team that looks worlds away from getting back to respectability.
For the entire season, Fields has been the antidote to any feelings of despair that Bears fans have had. The defense might be awful, but Fields’ amazing running ability overshadowed it. No receivers? Hey, who cares — Fields just faked another defender into a parallel universe. A rising inflation rate? Fields.
But the Lions beat him up Sunday, another reminder that an offense predicated on a quarterback running can’t work consistently in the NFL. There’s a price to pay, and it was on display in Detroit when staff helped him stretch on the sideline and when the medical observation tent was folded over him as he sat on a bench so a doctor could take a look at him.
And to think, more than a few prognosticators thought the Bears would do to the Lions what Carolina did to the Lions last week, rushing for 320 yards. For a while Sunday, that prediction looked good. Fields had 105 rushing yards in the first quarter. He finished with 132.
When is the last time a team was getting blown out and its quarterback ended up with just 75 passing yards. Crazy bad stuff.
Crazier was the sight of Fields still in the game in the fourth quarter. With this offensive line, he’s an injury waiting to happen.
“We kept Justin in there because we want to get the game experience,’’ Bears coach Matt Eberflus said. “You can’t get really get that anywhere else.’’
Sure you can. As a stuntman.
The Lions were playing for something, a playoff spot. The Bears looked like they were playing for the season to end. In good news, it ends next week against the Vikings at Soldier Field. Detroit finished with 504 total yards. It was a big setback for Eberflus, whose reputation in his first season with the Bears has been built on his ability to get a bad team to play hard. On exhibit Sunday was a bad team that got out-hustled, outplayed and pretty much outed. It was an embarrassment.
At one point late in the fourth quarter, Fields got sacked, even though two Bears were called for holding on the play. It’s hard to pull that off. The Lions sacked him seven times. Injuries played a role. The Bears lost two offensive linemen during the game, guards Teven Jenkins and Michael Schofield, but there was nothing about the tone of Sunday’s game that suggested their presence would have made a difference.
I’ve never seen a team go through this long of a losing streak with so many bouquets being thrown its way. Part of that is Fields’ promise, and part of it is fans’ overwhelming desire to believe. Most of it is beer.
The Lions scored 34 straight points Sunday. I don’t know how Fields’ rushing ability is going to help that sort of thing next year. The Bears’ defense had no idea how to stop Jamaal Williams, who finished with 144 yards on 22 carries. It was as if he were running through a tulip farm.
General manager Ryan Poles has to get Fields help on the line and at wide receiver, but there’s not enough money in cap space to do that and rebuild the defense. There will be improvement next year. It’s how the NFL is structured. When you’re as bad as the Bears — 3-13 bad — you get a high draft pick, maybe the first overall. When you trade Roquan Smith and Robert Quinn during the season to clear cap space, you’re going to have money to spend.
But all the riches in the Bears’ kingdom aren’t going to solve the issues in the horror show we saw Sunday.
