(670 The Score) Messing up a game is expected from the Bears. So is ruining an entire and once-promising season. What can't happen is the real-time destruction of the best quarterback prospect in the history of the franchise.
The Bears waited unconscionably too long to fire an incompetent head coach who should never have been allowed to survive as long as he did, asleep at the helm of a team that once thought it was going to be good, hilarious as that now seems after its eighth straight loss. They blew past the chance to salvage a season and now have to realize they're in danger of scuttling something far more valuable.
The barely interested Vikings sleepwalked to a 30-12 win in Minneapolis on Monday night, cementing the Bears' interim coaching staff as certain dead enders and ringing alarm bells regarding Caleb Williams and what's left of his rookie development curve: his confidence, his physical condition, his trust in teammates and his belief that he's in the right professional place.
Williams looks rattled and miserable, alternately too fast and too slow, escaping full-blown stampedes of pass rushes only to make last-second reads of chaotic bundles of bodies downfield. There's no plan, no comfort, no help.
His protection is in name only, just a collection of large and slow men who fall down too often. And even some of his good passes result in rock-handed drops.
It's all conspiring to make him worse, and that's what's really scary.
Williams is missing wide open receivers, holding onto the ball too long and just not feeling the rhythm of NFL offense, as it has been haphazardly installed into his body and mind by a clown car of overhired idiots and seat-of-the-pants promotion recipients as busy polishing resumes for other teams as they are doing their current jobs.
Meanwhile, Williams battles through what must be indescribable existential pain and uncertainty to stay both upright and upbeat, proudly carrying his own flag when so few around him can do so for and with him.
Williams is staring down Bears history now and more so with every snap that remains in this horror show. Even if you think that goes too hard, admit that it's at the least an ancient moral fable of some kind, an illustrative example of what we mean when we talk about the Bears.
I hate this. I hate that fatalism wins. I hate the stupid weight of stupid history.
We were told by Ryan Poles and Kevin Warren that the past doesn't matter anymore, until they need sepia-toned nostalgia to warm whatever is left in the hearts of dying old fans and enough monied political interests. Then of course it does.
This is the present, right in front of us, and the Chicago Bears are too well along already in the process of dooming it.
Dan Bernstein is the co-host of the Bernstein & Harris Show on middays from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. on 670 The Score. You can follow him on X @Dan_Bernstein.