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á MINNEAPOLIS -- The best thing you could say about the Bears after SundayÆs 36-10 loss to the Minnesota Vikings was coach Lovie Smith didnÆt fill the air with ridiculous ideas about winning out and going 9-7 like Arizona did last year to make the Super Bowl. Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings all but eliminated the Bears from any type of wild card pursuit with a machine-like 537 yards of offense ...

The Chicago Bears not only are bad, they've also picked a bad time to be bad. Obviously, it's never good to trade away your first round draft pick for a quarterback who isn't producingùwhether it's his fault or the lack of an offensive line. It's also not good to trade away your second round pick for a defensive end like Gaines Adams, who looks less physically imposing than the average NFL ...

When a football team is 4-6 and looking forward to a January of watching the playoffs on television, playing for the future only makes sense. The Chicago Bears will never do this under coach Lovie Smith. They never have, and never will. Already, weÆre getting indications Smith will stick with his usual philosophy of winning as many games as possible rather than looking at some young talent. On Sunday night, running back Kahlil ...

Quarterback Jay Cutler hadn't even thrown the third of five interceptions Thursday night in one of the worst Bears offensive displays since the one-year era of former offensive coordinator Terry Shea. Yet the analysts, and experts with NFL Network, and Internet bloggers, had already begun crucifying Cutler. The trade of Kyle Orton had blown up in the Bears' faces, the buzz went, and now they're left with no first round draft ...

One of the inexorable underlying qualities about coach Lovie SmithÆs Chicago Bears has been a complete insistence that outsiders really do not know their game well enough to accurately point out their failings. Smith treats criticism of the team by skipping over it and going on to whatÆs next. ôWeÆll go from there,ö he likes to say. The players imitate him. Fans and media almost never get real answers about whatÆs actually going ...

The Bears thought they had their bye week prior to facing Atlanta. Instead, like anyone else who plays the Cleveland Browns this year, the Bears have two byes. And AFC North teams have three byes. The NFL is full of bad teams this year, and then there are the Browns. They are in a class by themselves. They were so bad Sunday that theyáfrustrated running back Jamal Lewisáinto sayingáafter the game he ...

Remember the good old days when Bears coach Lovie Smith and defensive tackle Tommie Harris were fellow Texans in arms, working for a common cause? Apparently those days are long gone. Smith on Monday more or less admitted to benching Harris prior to SundayÆs 45-10 debacle at Cincinnatiá because he didnÆt practice last week. ôThere isnÆt anything wrong with Tommie,ö Smith said Monday after the team sorted through a horror film, aka Cedric ...

CINCINNATIùApparently Tommie Harris was doing a lot more than everyone thought. The Bears played without their once dominant, now perpetually convalescing defensive tackle, and made him look good by producing their worst defensive effort since Lovie Smith became coach in a 45-10 loss Sunday to the Cincinnati Bengals. This was ugly. It wasnÆt Patriots-Titans ugly, but it was ugly none-the-less. ôEarly on it was just for some reason one of those games where ...

A funny thing happened on tight end Greg OlsenÆs way to becoming quarterback Jay CutlerÆs go-to guy. Cutler got to some other receivers. So four games and 10 catches for 94 yards into the season, the Bears head into their Sunday night road matchup against the Atlanta Falcons trying for a re-launch on OlsenÆs season as a Pro Bowl type tight end. ôI feel that I have that type of potential and that ...

The Bears' defense made it into their bye week with one standout number to go with a lot of questions about the rest of their season. Any way they slice it, 14 sacks after four games speaks well about changes theyÆve made in the offseason in terms of personnel, coaching, and strategy. At this pace, the Bears would finish with 56 sacks, twice their total of last year and the most ...