Baffoe: Bears More Disappointing Than Angering
By Tim Baffoe--
(CBS) Oh, gosh darn it, Bears.
I can't even bring myself to curse. Linebacker Pernell McPhee can do that for me.
"S—t, they came down with a plan to run the ball down our throats and they ran the ball down our throats," McPhee said after a 17-15 loss to the Denver Broncos on Sunday.
Even though I don't have children (you're welcome, America), I find myself in dad mode following that game: I'm not so much angry as I am disappointed.
And it's not even about that singular loss. Before Week 11 itself, everyone had that game chalked up as a loss to the Broncos. It wasn't until Brock Osweiler was named the starting quarterback over the injured Peyton Manning mixed with the Kool-Aid of the Bears winning two straight road games prior that the mindset shifted to that of actually winning.
It was a winnable game, too. Many wouldas, couldas, and shouldas are dangling out there today. Of course the failed two-point conversion that would have tied the game with less than a minute left is the biggest of them.
"Yeah if you pay attention to what we do, we have a lot of (options) in our offense in every single down, not just two-point plays," coach John Fox said. "Sometimes we execute. Sometimes we don't."
I'm not sure if that's more Nietzschean or Jungian duality from Fox there, but it's a solid encapsulation of the season as we look at it Monday morning.
"They are a good team, but we let it get away from us," as Jay Cutler put it less philosophically.
Yeah, you did, slugger. But more than just a game got away.
Today we are hit with the emotional regression to the logical mean that is this team. At season's beginning, it was about developing young guys and weeding out those who wouldn't be part of the rebuild. It was also about hoping for lots of losses and the best possible draft position for the best chance of Ryan Pace repairing a dilapidated infrastructure left by former general manager Phil Emery.
But then Adam Gase's offense started clicking. Cutler looked something like ideal. Vic Fangio's mishmash defense was playing above its head. Special teams was … really bad actually, but the Bears looked like an actual football team -- or at least a potential contender in a bad overall product that is this year's NFL. The Green Bay Packers looked pedestrian. The Minnesota Vikings couldn't be as good as their record. The Detroit Lions were ... the Detroit Lions. The NFC was just ugly enough.
Hope sucked us in, clouded our judgment. Criminy, we were talking playoffs, people.
For the Bears. In 2015. Jeez.
Now all of a sudden, they're 4-6. Playoffs means winning out or maybe going 5-1 and having lots of unfortunate things happens to multiple other teams. It's basically a pipe dream.
Which, considering the preseason expectations, would be OK if not for the Bears now being sucked into the gravitational field of the giant garbage collective of mediocrity -- the 8-8s, the 7-9s, the draft pick in the teens.
It wasn't hard to do. They lacked the talent. Injuries were all over the place. Jay Cutler could easily be Jay Cutler.
But, nope. The coaches had to coach up a lackluster roster. Cutler had to be good.
And here the Bears are. They're not at one of the satisfying poles of good or bad that would both work toward a better future. Instead, they're in the middle, the one scenario they couldn't fall backward into but did anyway.
Where's that outmatched team playing outmatched pseudo-football games decided by the other team basically at halftime? Was that too much to ask for? Where's 2-8 at? Then we could debate the quarterback draft class or some defensive freak of nature from the SEC while kind of watching December games while cleaning the house or preparing a big Sunday dinner.
That's all that was required of these Bears. It seemed too simple a few months ago and, in fact, it was.
The Bears let us down by overachieving just enough to be not good enough. They really let us down.
And it's all not even curse-word-worthy. Shucks.
Tim Baffoe is a columnist for CBSChicago.com. Follow Tim on Twitter @TimBaffoe. The views expressed on this page are those of the author, not CBS Local Chicago or our affiliated television and radio stations.
