Bears Fall 13-10 to Browns, Wrap up Winless Preseason
The Chicago Bears put the finishing touches on a perfect preseason – perfectly awful. After their 13-10 loss to the Cleveland Browns, the Bears dropped to 0-4 on the preseason and failed to win a single preseason game for the first time since 1998. Ask anyone in the Bears’ locker room and they’ll tell you that it’s just practice and it doesn’t matter, but let’s face it – this team simply doesn’t pass the sniff test. I am willing to throw the record out if I had seen something – ANYTHING – that resembled good football in these preseason “glorified practices.”
There have been gaping holes along the offensive line, allowing 19 sacks in the preseaon including 10 of starter Jay Cutler. But the holes along the offensive line are minuscule compared to the holes in Lovie Smith’s Cover-Who defense. Teams continued to convert 3rd downs at an alarming rate. Even the usually sold special teams showed major lapses, including poor coverage, blocked kicks and blocked punts in three of the four games.
There were a couple of bright spots in the last practice game of the season:
- Todd Collins looked decent, considering he’s only been around for a week and a half. No disrespect to Caleb Hanie, but I wish the Bears had gotten a professional quarterback to back up Cutler months ago.
- Greg Olsen had a TD catch. Any chance that bolster’s his trade value?
- Our starting offensive line is better than Cleveland’s #2 defense. Just sayin’.
- Chester Taylor had 35 yards on 6 touches.
- Jarron Gilbert had a sack on his final push to make the squad.
- The first team defense found a way to get themselves off the field. After the Browns fumbled their first offensive snap, the first team D was pretty much done for the day.
OK, maybe not that many good things and I’m not counting Rashied Davis’ 3 catches for 65 yards as a good thing. I think he had at least 3 drops to go along with his 3 catches.
More news and notes to come and a closer look at the roster coming up.