Chicago Bears: Time to Panic After Eye-Opening Loss to the San Francisco 49ers
Published by Dean Siemon on November 20, 2012
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Chicago Bears
Many teams wouldn’t be pressing the panic button at 7-3.
But after the Chicago Bears suffered a 32-7 loss at San Francisco during Monday Night Football, I’m not just pressing that button.
In fact, I’m grabbing a sledgehammer and smashing the button. And for good measure, I’m running it over with a car and launching a missile at it.
So maybe writers (like myself) were just a little bit wrong when we said that backup quarterback Jason Campbell wouldn’t be as bad as Caleb Hanie was last year when Jay Cutler was injured.
Campbell was 14 of 22 for 107 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions. Take away the yardage lost in five sacks and add the 85 yards of rushing, and the Bears totaled 143 yards of offense.
This has been a problem for several weeks; the only difference is that the defense wasn’t able to maintain the same level of play this week as they had over the last seven weeks.
San Francisco’s backup quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, was able to pick apart Chicago’s defense and throw for 243 yards and two touchdowns.
No interceptions and no turnovers. No bread and no butter for the Bears.
So now the weaknesses have been found in Chicago’s defense, and you can be sure that Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings and Russell Wilson of the Seattle Seahawks were taking notes tonight.
The Bears have two games in three weeks against a Minnesota (6-4) team that runs the ball very well.
The rest of the schedule includes the Seattle Seahawks (6-4), the Green Bay Packers, who are now tied with the Bears at 7-3; the Arizona Cardinals (4-6) and the Detroit Lions (4-6).
This game was an eye-opening experience. The Bears were touted by some as Super Bowl favorites at the beginning of the season. But now we see an offense that is struggling, a defense whose holes were discovered by a quarterback making his first career start and a not-so-easy last six-game stretch.
For Bears fans, it’s time to panic.
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