Bears consistently bad
By TOM MUSICK
CINCINNATI – The Bears finally played 60 minutes of consistent football Sunday. Unfortunately for Bears fans, it was consistently terrible.
The Cincinnati Bengals scored early and often in a 45-10 thrashing that marked the worst loss of Bears coach Lovie Smith’s six-year tenure.
The Bengals piled up 448 yards of total offense and scored six touchdowns on their first seven drives against a porous Bears defense that entered Sunday’s game ranked in the top half of the NFL.
“[It’s] very embarrassing,” Bears linebacker Hunter Hillenmeyer said in a quiet locker room after the game. “It’s kind of sickening, you know? We know we’re better than that. We know what we’re capable of doing.”
The Bears (3-3) seemed capable of almost nothing in front of 64,900 fans at Paul Brown Stadium, where they lost the coin toss and nearly everything else to the Bengals (5-2).
Carson Palmer needed only the first half to throw four touchdown passes – his personal best in a half, while Bengals receiver Chad Ochocinco and former Bears running back Cedric Benson each had surpassed 100 yards by the time the Bears trailed, 31-3, at halftime.
Smith gripped both hands on a lectern after the game as he tried to pinpoint what went wrong.
The Bears lost for the second consecutive week and surrendered the most points in a game since Smith was hired in 2004.
“The Chicago Bears should never lose a football game like that,” Smith said. “Tough day at the office for us. Nothing went right. … I didn’t have my team ready to go this week.”
On offense, Bears quarterback Jay Cutler threw three interceptions and Devin Hester lost a fumble for a miserable minus-4 turnover margin. Matt Forte gained 24 yards on only six carries as an early deficit forced the Bears to stray from their original game plan and attempt to play catch-up through the air.
“I’m embarrassed, and I think that everyone in that locker room is embarrassed,” said Cutler, who finished with a 64.1 passer rating. “It’s going to sting for a few days to lose like that. We have a lot of work ahead of us offensively.”
By the end of the third quarter, many Bears fans who had made the nearly six-hour trip to Cincinnati started heading for the exits. Benson stuck around to pile up a career-high 189 rushing yards against the team that released him in 2008.
The total team meltdown perplexed Bears players who insisted that they had a good week of practice and saw nothing from the Bengals that caught them off guard. Bears defensive end Alex Brown said the pain of the loss should linger for several days, although Cutler said fans should not give up on the Bears after the blowout.
“They don’t have to adjust their expectations,” Cutler said. “Everyone in the NFL wants to win the Super Bowl. We have those expectations. We still think we have a good football team, and we still think we can make a run.”
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