Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune answers your questions:
“I wasn’t expecting more than eight or nine wins, but I was blown away by how bad the Bears looked. Are there any reasons for optimism they can turn things around? I didn’t see any. — @tn5280
“It was a really bad second half for the Bears. No question about that, and there’s nowhere to go but up, right? Yes, it seems like we’ve been saying that for a while. The one thing I would point to is this is a really young roster. Nearly half of the players are in their first or second season, so I would expect natural growth. Will they all take that step forward and emerge as real contributors to successful football? Of course not. But some of these players will develop.
“The coaches will get a better feel for strengths and weaknesses, and you should see improvement. The sting of the loss was made worse because it came against the Packers without Aaron Rodgers. It’s a long season and there appear to be some bad teams on the schedule. You’d classify the Bears as a bad team now, too, but there will be opportunities for success.”
I’ll say that Biggs has a point. But I think on an organizational level, this just doesn’t fly with me.
The Bears have roughly the 10th oldest roster in the NFL. The youngest? The Green Bay Packers.
The Packers have a young team, too. The difference is that they were well prepared to rise to the occasion and to perform in a hostile environment knowing that their quarterback was entering his second NFL start and that they were without their best wide receiver.
The Bears? They laid an egg in a big spot. As has been their habit for a few years now. Think the opener in 2018. Think virtually every Packers game for that matter.
Its the coaches job to get players ready to play on game day. The Bears players didn’t look like they were. This is a bad, bad sign for a coaching staff that oversaw a lot of losing in 2022. Yes, the Bears had a poor roster. But they did little to rise up and overcome that deficiency and arguably they should have won more games.
These performances where the lights are on have become a bad habit for both the team and the organization. They’re indicative of incompetence on a higher level where coaches and the men who hire them aren’t making good decisions. Meanwhile one of the NFL’s best fan bases is told to wait for tomorrow. Over and over and over again.