How Bears Put Themselves in a Tough Spot

Analysis: Player preparation is in question as the Bears try to counter last week's unnecessary embarrassment against New York with an upset win on the road within their division.

Realities of rebuilding hit the Bears in the face last week in New Jersey and they're unlikely to stop soon.

When a team lacking talent is not properly prepared for all eventualities and plays on the road against comparable or better talent in the NFL, it won't be pretty.

Make no mistake, the Bears were unprepared.

Defensive players talked about not knowing the Giants could run all the bootlegs they ran. The offensive line lost its best blocker, Cody Whitehair, and had no way to block the interior of the Giants' defensive front. The Giants had a defense with three sacks but their pass rush looked like an avalanche rolling downhill at Justin Fields.

Darnell Mooney talked about several mistakes made in running routes. It's on the coaches to make these routes against specific defensive looks entirely clear to players, Luke Getsy. For crying out loud, in one instance, Mooney was running a route from last year's offense and he admitted it.

Rookie safety Jaquan Brisker thought the defense was fooled by something they hadn't seen on film.

"Just trying to run a lot of boots to the nub, which you really don't see, which they haven't shown," rookie Brisker said. "Just a lot of boots to the nub. Him really not scrambling, him not really throwing the ball at all."

In other words, they were fooled by a very basic football play. The quarterback took the snap, faked and ran.

Even with all of that, the Bears stayed in a game on the road against the Giants when they failed to score a touchdown. They did it because New York is also rebuilding with lesser talent.

Take the same approach, then go to Minneapolis against a team with enough offensive talent that they were able to bury the Green Bay Packers in the opener, and it's easy to project an outcome.

By losing the game to the Giants, the Bears have turned what could be an opportune point in their schedule into a meat grinder.

They have lost, they play on the road in Minneapolis, then must turn around in four days and play another game in a short work week at home against Washington.

Last week coach Matt Eberflus early in the week told reporters of a change in their practice schedule as they prepared for the Giants.

"You have to be mindful of the techniques and fundamentals you're working on during the individual period and also during the team periods," Eberflus said. "We shortened practice a little bit today."

They took out one-on-one drills. They've had shorter practices again this week, as well, and it's made for shorter work days.

"We shortened it because we wanna stay fresh," Eberflus said. "We played three games in a row. We wanna be fresh going into Sunday so we shortened that and we'll do that the next two weeks and that's why the player media availability has been bumped up just a tiche for (media)."

Needless to say, they actually did play like a team that didn't practice much last week. Whether they were fresh made no difference to New York.

After the way the Bears played against the Giants, maybe the longer practices and inconveniencing the media with a later schedule might be better?

Kirk Cousins, Justin Jefferson and the Vikings will likely make short work of the Bears, anyway. 

The Bears have lost four straight within their division. Divisional opponents see each other more often and it's in such situations where talent most often prevails.

The best laid plans can often go astray, as they say, and the Bears are at a point in the season where they could have either hung around, and even flirted with the idea of being right there with potential playoff challengers until late in the year.

It was all the residue of their efforts in the opener, a shocking victory over a Super Bowl challenger. That win put them ahead of the game.

Instead, they watered down their season-opening win with an embarrassing beat-down against a weak Giants team and look like they could quickly fade back into the top-five range for the draft.

Facing a playoff challenger leading the division on the road is a recipe for disaster for a team that needs every single player and every coach practicing every available second, entirely focused and fighting simply to stay close on a week-to-week basis.

The trip to Minneapolis after another week of shorter practices could very well make last week's trip to the Big Apple seem like a ride on the Staten Island ferry.

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Forecast: Vikings 28, Bears 20

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