(670 The Score) The worst 5-1 team we've ever seen just became the worst 5-5 team one could possibly imagine.
The 19-13 loss to the Vikings on Monday night and the painful injuries to both Akiem Hicks and Nick Foles were a slamming of a cold and rusted iron door in the faces of any contorted and misplaced optimism for the 2020 Bears or even the futures of the coach and general manager. It almost felt satisfying, in that those of us trying to navigate a reasonable intellectual path are now afforded an off-ramp to certainty that we allowed to elude us.
There's nothing left to argue. The Bears were just left bereft and cold in their own home, spread out against the sky, like a patient etherized upon a table.
The offense is nonexistent. Matt Nagy's grandiose dreams and so many words died on a sad laminated card in someone else's hands, from the very first play from scrimmage. The same blocks get missed, the same ill-timed passes sail through hands, some other runner reverses field and falls down, there are no hot reads on predictable third-down pressures, and so it goes.
One hundred forty-nine yards of offense. Total.
Defensive standouts are only there to taunt us. Khalil Mack doing what he does and Roquan Smith becoming a star of stars now seem like cruel twists of fate, playing out amid everything else. Even the narrative arc of this particular game fed that feeling, with Cordarrelle Patterson's 104-yard kickoff return touchdown to start the star-crossed third quarter giving more last-gasp thought to it finally being OK enough to at least live another day. We see the clear problems and talk around and over them as the plays unfold, banking on the NFL's insane randomness and refusing to let what's now a mountain of visual evidence and statistical data deter the fact that there's always a chance.
We can let it go.
We've known them all, the evenings, mornings and afternoons with this commitment we share like a grudge. This outcome in this way is telling us to stop thinking this Bears team is anything more than something we agreed to believe was something far more possible than what it is.
We're now closer to the end of so many things than the beginning, and now it's just how it happens in slow motion. If Nagy were going to be the guy, he would've been the guy and it would've been obvious in moments like Monday night. And Ryan Pace now has gotten three expensive quarterbacks wrong, which isn't good.
It feels like this is where so much Bears energy receded, despite all the money and the draft picks and the words and the outward positivity and convivial expressions for better things.
Scoreboard.
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous.
Dan Bernstein is the host of the Dan Bernstein Show on middays from 9 a.m. until noon on 670 The Score. You can follow him on Twitter @Dan_Bernstein.
