Chicago Sports Then and Now

Cedric Benson throttled his former team for 189 yards on the ground.

I went to a sports bar and was very excited to eat wings and watch my Bears play some competitive football for the first time all season.

I soon realized that competitive was not in the Bears vocabulary.

I watched as the Bears quickly got demolished by the arm of Carson Palmer, the hands of Chad Ochocinco and the legs of Cedric Benson.

The Bears offense was unable to score a single point, until they got a field goal late in the second quarter to go into the half trailing 31-3.

The Bears pass rush was a joke, they failed to get a sack for the second straight game and have not recorded a sack since playing Detroit in week four. The secondary got ripped to shreds, with Al Afalava, Zack Bowman, and Danieal Manning all looking like young inexperienced players.

The only good thing that came out of this game was Devin Hester’s performance. He had over 100 yards receiving and the only touchdown of the game, but he did lose a fumble.

Everyone wants to blame Jay Cutler for his dreadful performance, but this game got out of hand quickly and he was forced to throw the ball. Matt Forte only had six carries for 24 yards, so the Bears gave up on the running game early.

This was the worst loss under the Lovie Smith era, and the worst loss for the Bears since the season opener against San Francisco in 2003, when they lost 49-7.

The worst part about this loss had to be giving up 189 yards and a touchdown to former first round pick Cedric Benson, who was totally ordinary in his time with Chicago. He is currently the NFL’s leading rusher ahead of the Vikings Adrian Peterson.

Benson had his best game of his career and of course it comes against his former team. He never looked anything like that when he played for us, I don’t understand how he got so much better. That was the most frustrating thing for me to watch.

Quote of The Day: Jay Cutler, “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, there are 10 football games left.”

Up Next: The Bears return home to take on the Cleveland Browns, who got crushed by Green Bay 31-3 today. The Bears are third in the NFC North behind, the 4-2 Packers and the 6-1 Vikings. The Bears have to bounce back if they want to look like a real football team and most importantly have a chance at the playoffs, because their quickly falling apart. The wins against Seattle, Detroit, and Pittsburgh don’t look very good after suffering two straight losses to Atlanta and Cincinnati.

The Bears have lost back to back road games for the first time under the Lovie Smith era.

Here’s the Bears next five games:

Nov. 1 Cleveland

Nov. 8 Arizona

Nov. 12 at San Francisco

Nov. 22 Philadelphia

Nov. 29 at Minnesota

Jake Perper covers the Chicago Bears for Sports Then and Now. You can also check out his popular blog Bears Backer.