Surrender is, incidentally, not an option, though it might be hard to distinguish it from whatever it is the Bears are doing on the football field these days.
This is woeful. This is pathetic. And those two will be the starting cornerbacks next week.
The choice to be made from here is whether the Bears should be first-round wild-card losers or top 10 in the next draft, where, oh, Simeon Rice or some other pass-rushing menace may be found.
I don’t know who that might be, but that is not my job. My advice is to not look in the same place they found John Thierry and Pat Riley and Chris Zorich and Carl Simpson.
What I know is that the far future looks more promising than the near. Help does not dress in the Bear locker room.
“We can beat any one of the next five teams we play,” said coach Dave Wannstedt. Fine. I pick Cincinnati. That leaves the Bears at 7-9, which is probably where they deserve to be, have deserved to be since the season began and will put them in the top half of the draft.
Life on Planet Wannstedt gets more and more fraught with desperation, to the point where Wannstedt admits to not having the answers.
“I wish I had answers,” he said.
Maybe he does not know the questions. Here are some. Where’s the pass rush? Where’s the coverage? Why are the cornerbacks leading the team in tackles?
Actually, I know the answer to that one. That’s because the cornerbacks are tackling receivers after they have caught the ball–usually. Sometimes the receiver runs out of bounds, sometimes into the end zone.
Watching the Bears play pass defense is like watching a bailiff drink from a dribble glass.
Of the 51 tackles made by the Bears against the Lions Sunday, more than half were made by the secondary.
“I don’t know what I can do,” Wannstedt said. “I’m exhausting everything I can do to make us a better football team.”
He has yet to try voodoo, magic potions or Phil Jackson’s enchanted circle.
Here’s what he did Sunday. He played five defensive backs, the extra one at the expense mostly of Vinson Smith, who has been his best linebacker.
And here’s what Detroit did against his scheme: 422 yards of offense, 24 pass completions and 24 points, which was six more than necessary to beat the Bears.
This is a Lion team that cannot, will not, does not win road games outdoors on grass, a defense that gives up even more points than the Bears, a team that is coached, after all, by one-foot-on-the-bus Wayne Fontes.
“I don’t want to take anything away from the Bears,” said Fontes, which was unnecessary since the Bears will give him anything he wants.
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“We just didn’t make plays,” said Bear guard Jay Leeuwenburg. “We had penalties, dropped passes. We didn’t play crisply. We made too many mistakes to win this ballgame.”
This is not a litany. This is more and more a Bear recipe. Leeuwenburg could have added blocked punt, blocked field goal and wrong punter.
The Bears did learn one thing. Todd Sauerbrun is not the worst kicker in the world. Pat O’Neill is. And slower. O’Neill takes so long to kick the ball he could make and eat oatmeal.
Rashaan Salaam has become an expensive sideline ornament when the Bears are trying to win games. He is an audience for Robert Green. If Salaam can’t be trusted today, why should he be trusted tomorrow?
The Bears are hugging mediocrity like it was a new skybox. Forget about where the Bears will play next; imagine when the Bears will play next.
“I don’t know what to say,” said Wannstedt.
Here is what an optimist would say. The glass is not half empty, the glass is entirely empty.
Think high draft choice.