For some reason, half the lights at Candlestick Park were not on Thursday night, and if it was a California thing about conserving energy, OK, I kind of get that.
It made it difficult to see the numbers on the players’ backs from the cheap seats, but it couldn’t obscure the fact that the Bears seemed to be conserving energy too.
Actually, that’s being extremely kind. That would seem to imply there’s something left in the Bears’ tank, physically and emotionally. There isn’t. They’re bad, their quarterback has night terrors and they play with empty craniums.
You would have been better off staring at a wall than watching this.
Jay Cutler threw five interceptions, including one in the end zone as time expired in a 10-6 loss. If somebody can explain why he plays poorly in night games, the Bears would love to hear from you. From his four-interception game in Green Bay to his two-interception struggles in Atlanta to Thursday’s head scratcher, the guy seems to have an aversion to the darkness. I say this because he’s taken to wearing a garland of garlic around his neck.
His first interception was one of the worst you’ll ever see. From the San Francisco 1-yard line in the second quarter, he tried to throw a touch pass over three 49ers. It didn’t get over the first 49er, nose tackle Aubrayo Franklin, who, with a 6-foot-1, 317-pound frame, would seem to have the vertical leap of a fire hydrant.
There is no excuse for that pass, especially with the Bears on the 49ers’ doorstep.
Cutler no doubt is lacking a supporting staff, but in a game like Thursday night’s, nobody was asking him to do everything. He was being asked to do something, anything.
He looks as down as anybody, and when he said wasn’t sure if leadership was a problem after the Bears’ woeful loss to the Cardinals last week, no one would have suspected he might have been wondering about himself.
For most of Thursday’s game, he seemed to play in a daze. That kind of thing can happen on a struggling team. Fair or not, though, it’s not supposed to happen to a quarterback for whom you gave up two No. 1 picks. If he can’t rise above, who can?
What you kept coming back to Thursday was how absolutely awful the 49ers are. They made so many mistakes, it looked like remedial football. Flags flew, blocking schemes broke down, passes went nowhere.
And yet, the Bears could do little with it. Here were two boring, evenly matched teams going at it like a pickup game at a somnambulist convention. The Bears’ defense, so bad last week in a 41-21 loss to Arizona, couldn’t give up 41 points to the 49ers in a best-of-seven series.
If the 4-5 Bears were looking for momentum coming out of this game, the only place they found it was on the charter jet heading down the runway toward home.
Everybody was in a firing mood after the debacle against the Cardinals. If it wasn’t coach Lovie Smith whom the people with the pitchforks and torches wanted, it was general manager Jerry Angelo. This game? I’m guessing people were too drowsy to get their ire up.
That might change Friday morning when the blood starts pumping again, but the truth is that this not a good team and it doesn’t seem to be in any position to be a good one next year either. Or the year after that.
Other than that, things are warm and sunny in Bearland.
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The grisly details of Thursday’s game won’t soon go away. Cutler’s second interception occurred because Devin Hester slipped on his route, leading to a 51-yard return by Tarell Brown in the second quarter. Cutler made the tackle, but he wasn’t on the field to stop Frank Gore from running 14 yards for a touchdown.
The Bears had a chance to take one more shot into the end zone before trying a field-goal attempt at the end of the first half, but with six seconds left decided to go for the field goal instead. That is the sign of a dumb team or one that lacks confidence. Which do you prefer? Right. Both.
Cutler’s third interception — collect them all! — was tipped at the line of scrimmage into the hands of San Francisco safety Dashon Goldson.
The Bears picked off a pass, too, in the third quarter, but an offside call against Adewale Ogunleye nullified it. And so it goes for the 2009 Bears.
San Francisco tight end Vernon Davis, who said during the week that the 49ers would destroy the Bears’ defensive line, was jawing with Ogunleye as the two teams left the field after pregame warmups. So there was the possibility of all sorts of things as the two teams kicked off.
But the more likely possibility — two bad teams playing poorly — took over.
The Bears cut it to 7-6 on Robbie Gould’s 38-yard field goal with 7:27 left in the third quarter. If you allowed it to set in, you might have found yourself asking how the vaunted Cutler-led offense got to this sad place. Settling for field goals when life with Cutler was supposed to be so much more
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