Turnovers Killed Bears

The Bears lost to Atlanta. The Falcons didn't outplay Chicago, they just let the Bears give them the game. Red zone turnovers are the worst mistake a team can make in a game; when you give it away in the red zone, you are robbing yourself of points. It's easy to blame Ron Turner for offensive woes most of the time, "He calls bad plays that don't put the players in a position to succeed." For the record, I am not a strong supporter of Turner. But it simply isn't fair to use him as a scapegoat this time, he called plays that had the offense moving very well. The team played well, the game plan was good. That is why Chicago out-gained Atlanta by 120 yards.

The blame for this game rests mostly on the shoulders of two of the offenses best players: Matt Forte and Jay Cutler. If Cutler would have simply thrown the ball away to end the Bears first drive, rather than deciding to force the ball into coverage while backpedalling, Chicago would have been in range for a gimme field goal.

Matt Forte fumbled on Atlanta's one yard line twice in a row. That is unacceptable, not to mention shocking. I don't care how bad the play calling was, if Forte would have just fallen down instead of falling down and coughing up the ball it could have been another easy three points.

If Chicago had gotten those six points, they would have been down  20-21 and in range for the easy game-winning field goal on Atlanta's five yard line. It is obviously a flawed perspective to assume that the game would have been the same if Chicago had kicked those field goals, but three points is always better than no points.

Other notes:

Was I the only one who was actually impressed with Orlando Pace in this game? Maybe it's because my expectations were low, but I saw Pace flattening defensive ends more than I have noticed in any other game this year. I remember he was called for holding; on that play his man beat him and he made the veteran decision to hold in order to avoid a certain sack of his QB. Obviously, it's never good to fail to block your man, but he took the lesser of two evils at that point. I think that many people are down on Pace because he committed a very odd-looking penalty at the end of the game; it was a bad play, but we shouldn't judge his performance by watching that one play.

The running game is embarrassing. It is putrid. Awful. If I knew how to fix it, I would probably be coaching football instead of writing a blog about it that no one reads, but I do have one thought. Frank Omiyale has played bad all year. Beekman played pretty well at LG last season. It doesn't take a genius to come up with switching them on the depth chart, but for whatever reason Lovie Smith has opted not to make that change. In my opinion, Omiyale has been bad in every facet of offensive line play. Apparently, the coaches are still thinking he will turn it around and make the adjustment from Tackle to  Guard. I hope they are right.