(670 The Score) Bears edge rusher Robert Quinn was visibly disgusted Sunday afternoon. Receiver Darnell Mooney was, as he put it, “a little pissed off." And linebacker Alec Ogletree grimly reflected on the bleak realities that tend to sink in for a lot of teams this time of year.
“Never got used to losing,” Ogletree said. “Never will be.”
The Bears have been losing for a while now, and on the surface there’s nothing particularly surprising about a 16-13 loss to the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday at Soldier Field. Even the way it happened – the squandering of a golden opportunity to upset a much-better team – felt eerily predictable, almost from the start. Of course, teams easily win home games against untested backup quarterbacks, so of course the Bears don’t. Chicago's loss Sunday – its fifth straight and seventh in 10 games – exposed what's arguably, at this point, a more important (not to mention glaring) issue for the second-worst team in the NFC: Sometime in the last six weeks, Bears football shifted from bad to embarrassing.
“You gotta finish,” coach Matt Nagy said after the game. “You gotta be able to end the games and close ’em out. And in the end, it’s situational football. You have the lead in two games to be able to close it out and win both of those games and we didn’t do that.”
Monday isn't going to be kind to Nagy. This was all the usual stuff, just crunched into the final 30 minutes. Wasting your last timeout of the second half on a PAT attempt would be bizarre even if Nagy's reasoning – ”We're at a point where you have the celebrations, you have the guys going back and forth," he said of the scene after the Bears went up 13-9 late. "And also knowing you're up those four points...” – made any sense. Put the game context aside, and burning a timeout to double-check pointless math is still objectively embarrassing. Having already wasted the other two in moments of team-wide confusion made it even worse. And while calling a wildcat dive from shotgun for running back David Montgomery on fourth-and-1 is certainly a choice, it’s hard to totally hate the idea when he was averaging 4.1 yards per carry.
“That's not a new play or anything we made up,” Nagy said. “That's a play that we had. If you get it, it looks good. If you don't get it, it looks bad.”
He’s not wrong – it did look bad. In fact, the Bears offense looked bad most of the game, minus two passes to Mooney and fellow receiver Marquise Goodwin. The toss sweep the Bears called on third-and-5 killed their opening drive, forcing them to rely on a kicker who suddenly seems to be working through some accuracy issues. Outside of Mooney’s big day (five receptions for 121 yards and a touchdown), the Bears offense was outscored by Ravens kicker Justin Tucker for more than half the game. Tucker is great and all, but that doesn’t make it any less embarrassing for Chicago.
“You want to be able to win out there, especially if you work all week, especially if you’re on the bye week and you work, work, even in the bye week,” Mooney said. “And just try to get away from all the negativity and all the losing area of it, and then try to come back on a win on the bye week. We didn’t get the dub. It hurts.”
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The Bears’ late defensive meltdown may be the most embarrassing part of all Sunday, just because of what that unit once was and still prides itself on being. It’s not even that the Ravens' Tyler Huntley, a second-year undrafted free agent, was the quarterback who did it – what stings is that he did it in 79 seconds. For the second time in two games, the Bears defense was trampled on opponents' game-winning drives. That’d be embarrassing anywhere, but it hits a little different in Chicago.
“If you look into the rearview, now you’re feeling sorry for yourself,” Quinn said. “Now you’re carrying unnecessary weight … I’m upset about our record, but I’ve put it behind us. Come Thursday, can we show up and me and we as the Bears perform like we’re supposed to, and give people something to cheer about?”
Cam Ellis is a writer for 670 The Score and Audacy Sports. Follow him on Twitter @KingsleyEllis.