Chicago Bears embarrassed themselves in loss to Saints

The Chicago Bears absolutely embarrassed themselves on Sunday and fans should be livid.

If you’re a Chicago Bears fan and you’re looking for a silver lining or some reason to feel positive or hopeful after their 36-25 loss to the New Orleans Saints, this isn’t the piece for you, and I would strongly urge you to look elsewhere.

This piece will be devoid of the politically correct, objective analysis you might want to see. Instead, it will be filled with very difficult truths about this team and the future of the franchise.

The last time the Bears took the field they got embarrassed by a mediocre Oakland Raiders team in London. They looked flat and disinterested, and the final score reflected it. The hope was that coming off of a bye, the additional week to prepare would do wonders for a team who needed to hit the reset button. There was also hope that the return of Mitchell Trubisky would be the spark they needed.

Instead, the team came out looking even flatter. Rather than look like a team coming off a bye with an extra week to come up with a game plan, they looked like they were coming off a short week and had to travel to the west coast. In other words, they looked completely lost.

The defense, that has played with ferocity for most of the season looked flat. Eddie Jackson hasn’t hit the big plays like he did last year, Roquan Smith has been M.I.A. the last three weeks, Leonard Floyd has pulled his own Houdini act, and once again the defense let a team, who was missing three of its most important offensive players, bully it all over the field.

Somehow, though, the offense was worse. And I don’t want to hear about Trubisky’s injured left shoulder. First, he said after the game that it wasn’t a factor. Second, he misfired on passes that a competent NFL quarterback should be able to complete with his non-throwing hand. He continued to make the same mistakes that have plagued him his whole career — poor footwork, not stepping into throws, not being able to go through his progressions, and missing wide-open receivers.

However, Mitch wasn’t the only offensive player who looked awful. Anthony Miller continued making mental mistake after mental mistake, deciding again to run his own route, rather than the one he was supposed to. He also appeared to line up in the wrong spot on at least one other play, while committing a turnover on another.

The run game continued to be a non-factor and to the chagrin of everyone, Matt Nagy sounded befuddled after the game as to why it hasn’t gotten going. Well, perhaps that might have something to do with the fact that he only ran the ball a total of seven flipping times the entire game — two of which were by wide receivers.

There is a lot to be concerned about. A defense who seems to be losing its gusto, possibly deflated by a lackluster offense, an “offensive-minded” coach who can’t figure it out, or a quarterback for whom you mortgaged the future who looks like he’ll never be the guy.

This is not the way fans expected 2019 to go for the Monsters of the Midway, but sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same.