With the week off right now, the Bears have a lot of work to do if they expect to salvage this season somehow. While a record of 3-5 is not the worst thing in the world, the way that it has gone down is what is making people shake their heads. Halfway through the season and things are looking muddy. Usually it is clear what will happen to a team after eight games, but these Bears are being clouded in the crystal ball.
The biggest problem is inconsistency. This team has had a couple of tough grind-it-out defensive struggles with both the 49ers and Jets, but then gets blown out by both Green Bay and New England by a combined total of 89-40. Not exactly a winning combination. The Bears rely heavily on quarterback Jay Cutler to do most of the damage and when he is on he looks like a top-tier quarterback. But on those days when he happens to be off, people look the other way and say, “There goes Jay messing up again.” It also makes some wonder whether Cutler is worth the 126.7 million dollar contract that he is under. Even more confusing seems to be with this defense. After the victory over the Jets, defensive coordinator Mel Tucker was being lauded for his ability to scheme that defense and bring them out of a hole even with some injuries to defensive starters. Now it gets harder with Kyle Fuller’s nagging hip injury and Lamarr Houston being out for the season. There was a feeling that the Bears defense might be back after a lackluster year. But then, something changed and the Bears were giving up an average of 32 points per game.
So far this season, the Bears have struggled to maintain consistent play. The kind that causes a team to tailspin to the depths of the standings and to cause players to start arguing with one another. The worst thing that a team can do is start arguing with each other. They need to take this week off to shed this skin of mediocrity off of them and get back to what everybody knows they can do, win.