Bears' real problem shows in pathetic loss to Vikings

 

 

The Minnesota Vikings entered Monday night allowing 29 points per game. The Bears scored 13 – six of which came on offense. Six points.

That’s pathetic. Those inside Halas Hall should be embarrassed.

But another evening spent watching this bumbling, incompetent Bears’ offense should not be viewed in a one-night, or even one-month, vacuum.

The Bears’ 19-13 loss, their fourth consecutive defeat of this season that’s become so miserable to witness, was so, so predictable.

It’s what happens when you take Mitch Trubisky instead of the Other Guys.

“I just don’t want to be average around here,” Ryan Pace said the night he staked his tenure as general manager to Mitch Trubisky back in 2017. “I want to be great and these are the moves you have to make.”

“… The most important position in all of sports is quarterback, and I don’t think you’re ever a great team until you address the position and you address it right.”

Pace did not address it right. The Bears, as a franchise, did not address it right – again. It’d be nice if the Bears were actually average at this point on offense. That might be enough to support an outstanding defense that doesn’t deserve all this.

The Bears are instead in a competition to see who can be more the more comically incompetent offense: Them or the New York Jets. And the Jets scored 27 points on Monday Night Football last week. Twenty-seven! Is that even allowed?

And so you get nights like Monday. Nights when your offense, with the game and season on the line, averages 1.4 yards per play in the second half against a young, sub-optimal Vikings defense.

You get days where all you want to do is turn the TV off and go do something else in the middle of a soul-crushing pandemic instead of watching your favorite team play.

You get seasons where you waste a talented defense on an offense that stinks. You get seasons like the Chicago Bears have resigned themselves to for so many seasons in their 101-year existence.

“Pissed off,” left tackle Charles Leno said, rattling off his feelings after getting embarrassed on national TV. “Disappointment. A lot of emotions, negative emotions right now.”

MORE: 3 takeaways from Bears' embarrassing loss to Vikings

And those negative emotions are where the Bears live, yet again, as a franchise. Everything you saw Monday was the product of Pace drafting the wrong quarterback.

Matt Nagy probably wouldn’t have given up his “Be You” play sheet had Deshaun Watson been the pick in 2017. Allen Robinson probably wouldn’t have chucked his helmet on the sideline with more force than a Nick Foles pass over the middle had Pace picked the quarterback from Texas Tech.

The Bears, and I will carry this take with me to my grave, would’ve won the Super Bowl in 2018 had they drafted Watson or Mahomes.

Foles, by the way, is not the problem here. You go get a guy like Foles, and praise his Knowledge Of The System because you screwed up picking the guy who was supposed to be your franchise quarterback.

You don’t trade for Foles if Trubisky is the right guy.

Pace, correctly, built a roster to go all-in on having the most valuable commodity in sports – a starting quarterback on his rookie contract. There was no wiggle room in that plan to hit the eject button on Trubisky three years after drafting him. Pace was been left with imperfect options to try to cover for the mistake he made in April of 2017.

But also, those imperfect options have been made worse by a few moves. Like: Trading a fourth-round pick and guaranteeing Foles $24 million (he’s going to be on the Bears’ roster in 2021). Or: Spending a truckload of cash on Robert Quinn, who had a sack on his first snap in a Bears’ uniform and hasn’t had one since, instead of using that money to address an offensive line that unsurprisingly was not just a coaching change away from being reliable.

Maybe some shrewder moves would’ve prevented the disaster that the 2020 season is becoming – if we aren’t there already (the Bears are still 5-5, after all). But winning the franchise’s second Super Bowl? Nah. Not with the wrong quarterback.

So ultimately, the game you hated watching on Monday night happened because Pace picked a guy who didn’t even play.

And the only good thing there is to say about this team is at least there are only six more games left for all of us to masochistically indulge in another three hours of Chicago Bears football.