There’s always a symbolic start to disasters.
There’s the cow that kicked the lantern, the raven that landed above the door, the pinhole in the dyke before the flood.
Where was it for the Bears? Where’s the guy who shot the albatross and was forced to wear it around his neck?
Yep, right there. It’s cornerback Tyrique Stevenson, three games ago against the Commanders at Northwest Stadium, taunting the crowd on the final play of a game the Bears had all but won.
The play started while Stevenson had his back turned and ended up being an incredible 52-yard Hail Mary touchdown pass that gave the Commanders an 18-15 victory.
One idiotic play. One symbol of so many things: childishness, arrogance, lack of discipline, cluelessness.
A game that was won, lost.
And as happens in those cartoons when nobody’s at the throttle of the engine, the train cars just keep rolling off the cliff. Boom, boom, boom.
The Bears now have lost three games in a row in increasingly embarrassing fashion. And placid engineer Matt Eberflus still hasn’t found the cord to yank the steam whistle and stop the mess.
Take Stevenson, for instance. If you’re the coach and you know you have a talented but erratic player like him (Stevenson had been flagged for an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty not long before the Hail Mary), you do something about it. You talk to him. You warn him. You focus him. You let him know this is kind of an important play and to get his head on straight.
Or at least your defensive backfield coach does. Or the defensive coordinator does. Or Tony Medlin, the longtime equipment man, does. Somebody, for God’s sake.
This stuff cannot happen.
And Eberflus had three timeouts left?
That Hail Mary let something seep out that now seems to be out of control, certainly beyond Eberflus’ grasp. If the Bears could have shrugged off the Hail Mary like a minor nuisance, dealt with properly and buried, maybe they would have been OK. But they didn’t.
Indeed, the Bears were embarrassed the next week against the Cardinals, losing 29-9 and giving up an astounding 53-yard touchdown run in the waning seconds of the first half. Eberflus said he called the wrong defense on that; he was expecting a pass. So was almost everybody. Everybody expected that Hail Mary to fail, too. But coaches are supposed to think about possibilities. Players, too.
The train cars keep tumbling. You see things such as wide receiver DJ Moore casually jogging off the field after running a route, even though quarterback Caleb Williams still was scrambling and the whistle hadn’t blown. Maybe Moore tweaked his ankle. So what? At least stay on the field like a wounded warrior for a few more seconds. Or don’t head to the bench without even turning to see what’s happening to your teammates still playing the game.
You do care, right?
Optics mean something. Body language is real. And symbolic. By the end of the game Sunday against the Patriots, Williams had the body language of a ferret with one leg and his tail caught in a steel trap.
The rookie would end up completing just 16 of his 30 passes for only 120 yards, getting sacked a franchise-record-tying nine times. Yes, the mangled offensive line was filled with substitutes and soon-to-be truck drivers, but the Bears should have known that and adjusted the plays accordingly. Maybe have a pass play that takes less than three seconds?
Letting Williams get mauled might be the biggest sin of all. To see him shoved down the Mitch Trubisky/Justin Fields conveyor belt only would prove the Bears are the franchise where young quarterbacks go to die.
Even veteran stars are infected with whatever leaked out on that Hail Mary. When Pro Bowl defensive end Montez Sweat didn’t hustle back from his pass rush and got caught behind the line of scrimmage for an offside penalty, allowing the Patriots to spike the ball and kick a field goal with one second left in the first half, it was beyond embarrassing. On a windy, harsh day for kicking, it allowed the Patriots’ Joey Slye to move up from a 42-yard attempt to a 37-yarder, which he nailed.
Sweat was hurt? Then lie on the field for an injury timeout. Or run through it, like you care.
The lack of fire and urgency in the Bears has spread from that Hail Mary failure, exposing itself like a contagious rash. Coaching has vanished. Poison ivy is all around. No ointment in sight.