Whipped: Bears crushed in Cinci

Sadly, this is not Photoshopped.

Remember last week when everyone said that the Bears couldn't have played worse? Guess what. They played worse. A lot worse. Like 'worst game ever' worse. It's rare that I can't make it through an entire Bears game - NFL football is just too precious to bypass - but I quit this one somewhere around the third quarter. I wasn't even pissed, really. Just deflated. The Bears could have taught Cedric Benson a lesson. They could have made up ground on the Vikings. They could have wiped away the lingering feelings from a second straight stomach-punch-level loss in the ATL. But no. Instead the Bears were obliterated, thoroughly and cleanly. This was domination in its purest form: from the opening kickoff, the Bears never stood a chance.

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Before the Falcons game, I wrote this.

The fact of the matter is that no one knows how good the Bears are yet, but that could be about to change. Next two games: At Atlanta- at Cincinnati.

If they win both: Bearz rule!
If they lose both: Fire Lovie!
If they split: More of the same uncertainty.

After skimming the comments at the Sun-Times and taking in the updates on Twitter and Facebook, I think it's safe to say I was correct: the prevailing opinion after this one seems to be that the Bears need to fire Lovie Smith. I'm not entirely sure I agree. I like Lovie. He's an alright coach. You can certainly do worse.


But maybe it's time. The Bears did not look ready to play yesterday. It doesn't appear that the players have tuned Lovie out Scott Skiles style (SSS), though. Maybe there's a bigger problem. Maybe this team doesn't have enough talent.

Mike Brown is long gone. Urlacher had been on a steady post-Super Bowl decline even before this year's season-ending injury. Nathan Vasher is a shell of his former self. Same goes for Tommie Harris. With the exception of Lance Briggs, Alex Brown and maybe Charles Tillman, this simply isn't the same defense that fueled the Bears in 2005 and 2006. They aren't very good. Part of it is the scheme - has the NFL officially figured out the Cover-2? - but it probably has more to do with talent. Three-fourths of this secondary would not start for any decent team. Same goes for two-thirds of the linebackers. Hell, at this point I'm not sure that Tommie Harris is even an NFL starter anymore. When he was good, he was great. But he hasn't been good in years. I'll be shocked if he's on this team next year.

It's easy to see how we got here. The good players got hurt and turned bad. Multiple sub-par draft classes finally caught up with Jerry Angelo. While I'm not against firing Lovie, I think the problems run deeper than him. Without a draft pick until the third round next year, this won't be an easy problem to fix, either.

Now, the question becomes...

Do the Bears suck?

Meh, I'm not so sure. I'd love to chalk this up to one bad game, but the Cedric Benson-induced wounds are still too fresh. I don't think this is a Mizzou type of loss, though. I don't think the season is over. I'm not ready to say that yet.

On the bright side, next Sunday we get a date with Horse Balls.