Poor Effort Leads the Bears to a 1-2 Start to Season

As I finished watching the Chicago Bears game Sunday, I thought about who to blame for such a poor effort and awful outcome.

The defense? They gave up 27 points, albeit against a good offensive team. However, third down seems to be the down the Bears just seemed to say, "Come on over. Take the first down."

The offensive line? Cutler was sacked three times and was under less pressure today then last week. But the Bears only rushed 13 yards on 12 carries, and Forte was hit in the backfield almost every running play.

The wide receivers? This may be the most frustrating group for the Bears. The only reliable WR is Earl Bennett and he was inactive. Roy Williams looks disinterested, Knox looks scared, and Sanzenbacher, although he has decent hands, is slow, and short.

The quarterback? Cutler didn't have a great day, 21 for 37 for 302 yards and two TD's to go along with two interceptions. But again, three years removed from the trade and it is hard to even tell what you have here at QB because you haven't given him any blocking or WR's.

My decision on who to blame finally rested on this: It was another total team loss—the Bears' second in a row.

The defense didn't make enough stops, or create enough turnovers. The offense wasn't nearly effective enough. The special teams was ineffective and again the coaching was subpar.

Green Bay got off to a quick start again. This seems to be the calling card of the Packers. Before the Bears could blink, they were in a 14 - 0 hole. Cutler led a good drive to cut score to 14 - 7 with a touchdown pass to Dane Sanzenbacher, but the Bears' defense played soft all day.

A couple of field goals and a third touchdown pass put the score at 27 - 10. That' s when Julius Peppers recovered a fumble in Packers territory, and the next play Cutler connected with Kellen Davis for his second touchdown pass of the day.

With the score at 27 - 17, Brian Urlacher intercepted a Rodgers pass, but the Bears went backwards. With a huge opportunity to make it a one score game the Bears. Instead, Chicago committed three penalties and forced the Bears into a third and 35.

The game ended a bit strangley when Johnny Knox returned a punt for TD that was called back because of a phantom hold on a "number 29". Currently, the Bears have no "29" on their roster, and after reviewing the play several times, no hold can be seen. This has proved to be irrelevant as even with that score the Bears would've had to move the ball again. This was something they couldn't do all day.

I found myself really questioning the coaching in several instances. It was more apparent at the end of the game when with 2 minutes and 15 seconds left the Bears tackled a Green Bay rusher. That made a second and ten, and with one timeout head coach Lovie Smith opted to let the clock run down to the two minute warning, and call a timeout after the second down run instead. This left the Bears with 1:15 after the punt instead of about 1:30. This seems small when compared to the Bears' problems today, but I thought it was a good example of how inept the coaching has been the past two weeks.

Although, the Bears have finished the rough part of their schedule, it may not get any easier.

Next week, the Carolina Panthers come to town, and they have an energetic young quarterback in Cam Newton, and in two weeks the Bears will play the resurgent Detroit Lions. It's hard to tell at this point if the Bears will be 1 - 4 in two weeks, or 3 - 2, but one thing is for certain: the Bears need to get healthy and start winning.