A Comedy of Errors

Fear of death can negatively effect decision making...

Five beers and a smashed TV remote later, the Bears pissed away another winnable game, 17-14.

Not really sure where to start here, so I'll rattle off 3 relevant statistics:

• 9TO's in the game
• 4INT's and a fumble lost for Cutler, 2 TO's in the red zone.
• 2 defensive TD's

Clearly not an elegant display of football artistry this afternoon. It was kind of the worst game I've ever seen but also a ridiculously entertaining and close game until the end.

At first, the game had the same stink of our last 3 losses: no line protection, no running game and a lot of sloppy play calling. Cutler running for his life, the receivers pulling up on routes and the defense spending too much time on the field.

Then we started to pull it together at the end of the first half. The running game is starting to pick up steam (opened up by the passing game) and Cutler finally converts a 3rd down to Hester and caps off the last drive with a big TD pass. Up 14-10 headed into halftime, I'm feeling pretty good.

Then:

Since I don't want to rant for 10 more hours, let's just say that Cutler looked like bad Rex and I was ready to strangle Lovie Smith to death with his own challenge flag.

HOW DO YOU NOT CHALLENGE THAT TOUCHDOWN (or, "fumble" according to the refs) ON THE 1 YARD LINE??? ARE YOU INSANE??!?

I mean, how do you challenge the clear non-TD by Bennett and then NOT challenge the clear yes-TD by Cutler? Who is manning the booth upstairs? I WANT NAMES. Absolutely inexcusable.

Troy Aikman was calling the game and kept trying to find excuses for Cutler (Knox stopped short on an INT, Hester didn't come back to the ball on another) but there is no excuse for throwing the last INT. Knox wasn't open. There was no seam. It wasn't 4th and long. Just a bad decision and it ended the game. I'd love to see the numbers on how many games we've ended with a Cutler INT.

I'm also tired of hearing how bad our talent is on the O-line. I mean, we have Olin Kreutz who goes to the Pro Bowl every year and Chris Williams is a first round pick. We've also got Omiyale who would start on most teams. Sure, our RG and RT positions aren't great but that's no excuse for our line to look like the JV Dillon Panthers. I blame Mike Tice and his stupid face. I can't stand looking at him. He's so smug all the time. Shut up Mike Tice, you suck, you were a bad head coach and you haven't gotten anything out of our unit all season. You've almost killed our franchise QB in the past 6 games. Time to get fired.

I'm generally a staunch Lovie supporter but I swear to god I was ready to tear his fucking head off today. No fire, no gameplan, lazy schemes... thankfully our defense is good and talented (I'm starting to love DJ Moore) and kept us in the game anyway. Martz seems like the only guy who gives a shit on offense, most likely because he wants to redeem his legacy as an offensive genius. I like Martz and I think he's doing a good job. We're just not executing.

Which brings me to Cutler.

Ah, Jay Cutler.

So polarizing...

I'll give it one more game before I pass judgement. My judgement will be fair, swift and merciless.

I am a kind god.

-KEG

A Day Filled With Bad News

Just because it didn't happen yesterday doesn't mean I didn't want it to

Sox:
So...could we find a way to suck more? Since Buerhle's perfect game, wins have been hard to come by. We lost 3/4 to Detroit, and then took another loss at the Metrodome last night. The defense was a joke, especially during a particularly disgusting 2nd inning that had the Twins scoring 2 runs on 2 singles (and 2 errors). In other news, AJ and Alexei are trying to kill eachother in the dugout, and Brian Anderson is asking to be traded.

This sucks.

Cubs:
You know, it's funny. I was watching this game for the sole purpose of making sure that the Cubs would lose, but found myself taking a different view of it. The reality is "which team sucks less?" In a game where the last 5 innings had both teams getting baserunners to 2nd or 3rd with less than 2 outs almost every time, you knew that someone would have to accidentally get a hit.

As it so happens, Soriano decided to end one of his worst days with a bang, a walk off grand slam. What the newspaper will probably overlook is that until that grand slam, Soriano had three K's, and neglected to run out a fair chopper (didn't even leave the batter's box) that could have been even worse had the runner not advanced to 2nd on contact.

Oh, and don't even get me started on that "suicide squeeze" where Fontenot NEGLECTED TO MAKE CONTACT, leaving Bradley dead in the water on the squeeze play. I especially enjoyed that one.

Also worth noting: the Astros' Arias is going to be a sick closer one day, as that guy's pitches have movement, speed, and location that's like watching the catcher hold up an oversized magnet.