TAMPA — If the Bears are going to play a quarterback who's prone to making mistakes, why not put in the guy who can make more plays out there?
The Bears can talk up Mike Glennon’s ability to win at the line of scrimmage and operate the offense all they want, but none of that matters if he’s losing after the ball is snapped. That’s what happened on Sunday, with Glennon throwing two interceptions — including a pick six — and losing a fumble in a 29-7 battering by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Raymond James Stadium.
Glennon started off with an efficient drive into Buccaneers territory, completing his first six passes and looking comfortable while doing so. But on the seventh pass, he threw a quick pass to tight end Dion Sims, who was blanketed by multiple defenders. Kwon Alexander picked that ill-advised pass off.
Glennon’s response to his first regular-season interception in a Bears uniform was just as bad, if not worse, than that pass. He lost a fumble when hit by Noah Spence and then threw an egregious pick-six later in the half. That’s no way to keep a job when you have the No. 2 pick and future of the franchise standing on the sideline as your backup.
Glennon was good but not good enough to beat the Atlanta Falcons in Week 1. We saw how bad the offense can look with him at quarterback in Week 2. Week 3 seems like a good time to find out what Mitchell Trubisky can do.
More September woes
With Sunday’s loss, John Fox’s Bears teams are 0-8 in September and have combined to lose by 125 points in those games (an average of 15.6 per game). Teams that begin the season 0-2, historically, have an 88-percent chance of missing the playoffs. That’s now three consecutive years in which the Bears have been effectively eliminated from postseason contention halfway through September.
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Injuries continue to pile up
Both linebacker Nick Kwiatkoski (pec) and offensive lineman Tom Compton (hip) suffered first-half injuries that ruled them out of the rest of the game. Each of those players’ units has already dealt with a confirmed or possible season-ending injury since the start of training camp — linebacker Jerrell Freeman (torn pectoral muscle) and offensive lineman Eric Kush (torn ACL) — further thinning the depth at both positions.
Kwiatkoski, filling in for Freeman, was the Bears’ early leader with four tackles, while Compton started in place of Kyle Long for the second consecutive game. Josh Sitton (ribs) left the game in the fourth quarter, too, with Bradley Sowell filling in for him and Cody Whitehair moving from center to left guard to right guard over the course of the day.
The Bears were going to need good injury luck to be competitive in 2017; they’ve had the opposite of that.