(670 The Score) Please make it stop, whatever this is. That couldn't have just happened. Not like that.
The Bears just lost their 14th consecutive game after leading at home by 21 points in the third quarter against a terrible Denver Broncos team that's in the midst of one of the worst stretches of NFL defense in history.
They lost 31-28 on Sunday. They lost what was becoming one of the best-quarterbacked games the franchise had ever seen. They had the chance to back up their lofty claims of being close to something special and instill a revitalized sense of belief in a reeling locker room, and instead they came up with a perfect storm of incompetence to drop them to 0-4 and force a reckoning that seems immediate and inevitable.
The Matt Eberflus era is over in Chicago. Enough, already.
I hate doing this, the trite and usually unwarranted fire-the-coach bit, but that was just insulting to anyone who cares about the Bears, both inside the building and out. Such accountability always seems so unlikely in Lake Forest, however, perhaps particularly with a game Thursday so fast approaching.
Eberflus can't stand in front of those players again, preaching hustle and intensity and turnovers and situational smarts. Nobody was listening, and they certainly won't be now. Any remaining sense of authority he may have possessed was vaporized by such an unthinkable collapse.
He drew boos when punting from near midfield when facing fourth-and-2 on their first drive, and perhaps that influenced his decision to eschew a 35-yard chip shot field-goal attempt to break a 28-28 tie with 2:57 remaining. The Bears instead tried a hard count, called a timeout when the Broncos didn't bite and then decided to run Khalil Herbert inside from a shotgun formation. He was stopped for no gain, and we felt something awful bubbling up, that familiar sense of unraveling.
It was all coming together so nicely, too, a laugher by the lake with Justin Fields setting a record for consecutive completions and throwing four touchdowns in the first 300-yard passing game of his NFL career. Fields even added a nifty 20-yard scramble on what would've been that fateful go-ahead drive. He made just two mistakes, and they were fatal: losing the ball on a sack/fumble that was returned by the Broncos for a tying score midway through the fourth quarter and miscommunicating with Cole Kmet on the interception that sealed the outcome. Fields' star-crossed professional career is again marked in a way that almost seems cruel, and reclaiming his trajectory under this regime seems like a remote possibility at best.
The pregame chatter had been all about the deactivation of Chase Claypool and his apparent decision to not even attend the game, as well as the elevation of rookie Tyson Bagent to the backup quarterback spot.
Good times back then, when we thought such topics mattered.
The Bears haven't won at home since Sept. 25, 2022 and haven't won at all in nearly a full calendar year. They're the first team in NFL history to allow at least 25 points in 14 consecutive games, despite hiring a defensive expert as their head coach.
There had been every kind of loss in this dubious streak — blowouts and near-misses, Ls of every shape and variety — but there was nothing quite like that one, until it happened.
There's no undoing it, no looking at the film and cleaning it up, lamenting a couple plays that just didn't go their way. We all felt something break.
Whether anyone with the Bears makes a decision to act, Sunday was undoubtedly defining. There are no more excuses and no places for anyone to hide.
Dan Bernstein is the co-host of the Bernstein & Holmes Show on middays from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. on 670 The Score. You can follow him on Twitter @Dan_Bernstein.