The first thing that I heard after the Bears loss to the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday was the thing I expected. That was because, if nothing else, it was the same thing I heard last year and the year before that.

“We could have won if not for two dropped passes,” one fan said. “We didn’t have Kyle Long.”

One media member said, “Had Bears right tackle Bobby Massie held his block against Falcons defensive end Brooks Reed instead of weakly opening the turnstile, perhaps quarterback Mike Glennon would have found a mismatch in man coverage to complete the game-winning pass.”

And, of course, Bears head coach John Fox got into the act. “I think right now we’re a pretty good football team.”

[eye roll]

Let’s be honest, here. What we heard Sunday, what we’ve heard for a long time, the “What if…’s” and the “If only…’s”, can be characterized as one thing: the mating call of the loser.

These are the words that every losing organization says to itself. But they don’t change the fact. You lost.

The truth is that there isn’t that much difference in talent, top to bottom, in the NFL between teams. Yes, the Bears have a miserable wide receiver corp, the worst in the NFL – before injuries to Cam Meredith and Kevin White. But they also have budding star running backs Tarik Cohen and Jordan Howard. Yes, they have a below average defensive backfield. But the front seven is pretty good and showed that yesterday.

No, though the Falcons were the more complete team, that wasn’t the difference yesterday. The difference was in the little things that went wrong at key moments during the game – little things that always bite bad teams.

You think the Bears are a “pretty good football team”? Good football teams don’t allow 88 yard touchdowns to mediocre tight ends like Austin Hooper.

After taking a day to digest that play, it seems evident now that the team completely blew the coverage. Linebacker Jerrell Freeman played zone when everyone else matched up. Danny Trevathan was spying quarterback Matt Ryan. Freeman didn’t carry Hooper up the seam. Free safety Quintin Demps, left the middle of the field to double Julio Jones. Hooper was left completely uncovered.

You think that the Bears win “if only Massie had held his block” on the last play? What about the two dropped touchdown passes, one by Jordan Howard and the other by Josh Bellamy, just two plays before? If it looked familiar, its because the Bears managed to drop passes in close home losses to the Titans and Packers last year. “If only” Bellamy had caught one of those, Matt Barkley would be a local hero.

Believe me, if it hadn’t been dropped passes and critical missed blocks, it would have been something else. That’s because these are plays that bad teams don’t make. They are plays that the Bears haven’t made for some years now. And that’s the difference between a “pretty good football team” and what they really are. A team that flat out doesn’t come through when it counts, that let’s injuries affect their play, that always makes just enough mistakes to lose.

“If only” the Bears could win the close ones “If only” had that little something, that intangible winning combination that allows them to do what it takes and make plays when the game is on the line. But they don’t. And people are going to have to be realistic and face that as we enter what could be another long year.

Defense

1. Atlanta came out executing well. They spread the ball out, balanced the run and the pass. They looked sharp.
2. The Bears played a lot of zone defense hoping to get pressure on Ryan with the front seven. I think we’ll see a lot of this during the year, given the state of the defensive backfield (i.e. not good). I’d say it was occasionally successful but inconsistent depending upon how successful the pass rush was. Atlanta spent a good part of the second quarter picking that zone apart with Julio Jones and Mohamed Sanu. Truthfully the Bears defensive backs were out classed.
3. The Bears did a reasonable job of stopping the run and did a pretty good job at the line of scrimmage. But Atlanta is pretty good with the play action pass and they occasionally got burned with it.
4. Akiem Hicks was the best Bears defensive player on the field. Great game both rushing the passer and penetrating against the run.
5. Was Pernell McPhee on the field at all?
6. I know Leonard Floyd was out there most of the time but… let’s just say you wouldn’t know it from the stat sheet. They need more from him.
7. Hard to figure out what happened on the 88 yard Austin Hooper touchdown in the fourth quarter but it looked like Quintin Demps blew the deep coverage.
8. I didn’t think this was Matt Ryan’s best game. He wasn’t real accurate.
9. There was some awful tackling out there.

Offense

1. Not surprising to anyone who watched the preseason, the Bears came out in a lot of double tight end. Also not surprising, the Falcons responded by stacking the line of scrimmage with a lot of guys in the box. They were keying on the running backs.
2. The Bears played for the first quarter and a half taking what the defense gave them – i.e. the pass. Just one problem. They have the worst wide receiver group in the league. And that was before losing Cam Meredith. The Bears really struggled with short passes that went nowhere.
3. Those passes went nowhere because of the speed on the Atlanta defense. No sooner did a receiver get the ball then he would get hammered. Yards after the catch were at a premium. they got decent pressure on Mike Glennon.
4. The Bears tried to counter the Atlanta speed and aggressiveness with some misdirection plays. I’d say that they had limited success.
5. Here’s the good news. Late in the second quarter the Bears threw up their hands and said, “The hell with this.” They just ran despite the defense. and it worked to give them a touchdown late in the half.
6. Tarik Cohen tore it up with some spectacular runs. Not only is he athletic with excellent vision, he’s short, tough to get a hold of and tough to find behind the line of scrimmage. He and Jordan Howard are a potent one-two punch in the backfield.
7. Give the Bears offensive line some love for some good blocking up front and everyone else, including those miserable wide receivers, credit for doing a good job of contributing as well.
8. Glennon didn’t look good out there but I really can’t fault him. He had some “where was that going?” passes but he’s surrounded by nothing to pass to, was under a fair bit of pressure much of the time and was playing a very good defense.
9. I guess you can’t run the ball on every down but I really thought that they should have done it more, in the second half. I literally cringed in the second half every time I saw a shot gun formation because I knew it was a disaster waiting to happen. I can’t remember ever seeing a team That was less of a threat to throw a ball more than 8 yards. The Falcons just sat o the short routes and caused havoc. It would help if they put Glennon under center more so they could play off of their success running the ball and run a realistic play action pass.
10. Brook Reed had a great game attacking the line of scrimmage for the Falcons.
11. As bad as the receivers are I do wonder if the Bears shouldn’t be getting more out of Kendall Wright. Tight end Dion Sims occasionally looked good, too.

Miscellaneous

1. This was originally the announcing team that was supposed to include Jay Cutler. Without him, there wasn’t much special to pay attention to.Kevin Burkhardt, Charles Davis, Pam Oliver were professional and Davis, in particular, did a reasonable job of hitting all of the important points as far as I was concerned. In fact, for what its worth, he literally said a lot of things as I was thinking them.We certainly could have done worse.
2. The game started with a short kick to the 10 almost put the Bears in the hole right away. A penalty brought the 60 yard return back. Connor Barth kind of redeemed himself a bit later with 54 yd field goal followed be a kick off into the end zone for a touchback.
3. I’d say penalties weren’t outrageously bad on the part of either team. Hicks had a bad roughing the passer penalty in the third quarter. That extended a long drive that ended in a field goal.Not a great game for Cody Whitehair. He had a hands to the face penalty and a holding penalty. He also had a low shotgun snap.
4. There weren’t many drops until the last Bears drive. Kevin White had one on the first play of second half. But the ones that really hurt were the two by Josh Bellamy and Jordan Howard in the waning seconds of the game. Both may have been game winning touchdowns.
5. The Bears didn’t turn the ball over. Perhaps more telling, they didn’t get any, either.
6. It won’t necessarily show up in the stat sheet as being as bad as it was but the Falcons had some really long drives that tired the Bears defense out in the second half.
7. I think the best team won this game. I give the Bears credit for hanging in there with inferior personnel but in the end I think the cream rose to the top.

• With the promotion of quarterback Mitch Trubisky to the back up role, a legitimate question arises – why keep quarterback Mark Sanchez if all he’s going to be in a third stringer?

  There are a couple answers to this. First, the third quarterback on the roster is usually your developmental quarterback. The Bears have one of those – he the second stringer. So you don’t need another one in that spot.

  Second, Sanchez can still play a role as a mentor to both Trubisky and Mike Glennon.

  “This has all been well thought out. We were honest and up front with Mark about the reasons we value him. It starts with he’s a good player,” general manager Ryan Pace said. “But it also goes into all the intangibles he brings, what he brings to our locker room and the quarterback room. Mike can lean on his experience, and Mitch can lean on that too. He’s valuable for us. He’s the kind of guy that just exudes positive energy wherever he is, and he has seen a lot in his career.”

  But perhaps more to the point, Sanchez is a good insurance policy. There’s no guarantee that Trubisky is going to be ready to step in and replace  Glennon should that be necessary. He still lacks experience.

  Trubisky will now get the first shot should it come to that. But with a poor wide receiver group and an offensive line that is already showing cracks due to injury, Trubisky may not perform well. In fact, it would be fair to say that playing him could do more harm than good. In that case, you want Sanchez available to stop in and take the heat.

• Much has been made of the fact that linebacker Pernell McPhee is practicing and looks to be in position to play on Sunday.

  Head coach John Fox said that McPhee is “probably in the best shape he’s ever been in” and “We felt confident just watching him move around today.”

  GM Ryan Pace echoed that thought:

  “Monday’s practice, you felt him out there. He only knows one speed. We’re mindful of that, how we’re going to manage him. But it’s exciting to see. I think you’ll see today with his pads on, the way his body looks, the way he’s moving around. He’s a very disruptive player that provides a lot of pass rush for us. So it’s just exciting to have him back. But we’ll have a plan in place. And fortunately we have enough guys there where we can rotate and be smart about how we utilize him.”

  Much has been made of the fact that McPhee is moving better after losing pounds in the offseason. But McPhee was pretty quick even at his heavier playing weight and what people aren’t saying is the real reason for the weight loss. It because it has a dramatic effect upon a player’s knees.

  Studies show that for each pound of body weight lost, there is a four pound reduction in knee joint stress. For the average person, the accumulated reduction in knee load for a 1-pound loss in weight would be more than 4,800 pounds per mile walked. You can imagine how much that increases in an athlete that runs up and down a football field for a living.

  The hope obviously is that having McPhee play below his normal playing weight will extend his career.

• One of the more surprising weekend cuts for the Bears was defensive lineman John Jenkins.

  Jenkins is a 6’3″, 327 lb defensive lineman that the Bears signed in the offseason, presumably to be the primary backup for nose guard Eddie Goldman.

  The defense wasn’t the same last year when Goldman was out injured and they had little behind him in terms of depth. So it was surprising that the Bears risked exposing him to waivers before resigning him after putting safety Deiondre’ Hall on injured reserve.

  It all worked out in the end but it makes me wonder what the Bears were planning to do at the position if someone had claimed Jenkins.

• With no Dolphins game on television what’s left of the Miami viewing audience after the evacuation is complete will get the Bears game. Won’t those poor people have suffered enough?
• The best news all week for Bears fans? Every single writer for the Chicago Tribune picked the Falcons to win Sunday.

  Chalk this one up as a slam dunk win for the Bears.