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The Bernstein Brief: Bears' Loss Emblematic Of Season

By Dan Bernstein--
CBSChicago.com senior columnist

(CBS) Another defeat Sunday was just right for the lost and insignificant 2016 Bears, relegated to the anonymousness of the D-list network broadcast and subject to an officiating crew that turned yet one more NFL game into constant post-play guesswork.

This was the Bears, and this was the NFL. Chicago and Detroit took turns begging for flags after every incomplete pass and got them often enough, and some blocks were holds and others not. Plays stood or they didn't, and then three hours had elapsed and it was back into the cold and gray to shovel more snow.

Football now creates its own kind of existential crisis, as actions that change games are entirely wiped out, simply ceasing to be. We see something occur, then wait anxiously wondering if it happened, if it actually counted.

It all happened, eventually. A final retrograde drive ending with another dropped pass, another game off the schedule in a season's long walk into nowhere.

Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. You can follow him on Twitter  @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.

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