Bernstein: Bears Have To Win This One
By Dan Bernstein --
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) Forget for a moment the big picture, the one that has the Bears all but pointlessly confident at 3-5 and people writing about how coach John Fox is saving his job by having them not as awful as they were. The discussion of their proximity to winning a title can wait for now, supplanted by the first real urgency Fox has faced.
He had better find a way to beat this garbage Packers team at home Sunday.
Coming off an extra week of prep for their developing star quarterback to be, there are no excuses for the Bears in this one. Not with a defense at the top of its game against Brett Hundley, the replacement for Aaron Rodgers who seems to lack enough sense and wherewithal to keep his team's deficiencies unexposed.
Not that we have ever known what Fox exactly does as a coach, other than acting as a bland spokesperson and waving his arms on the sidelines each week, but he claims responsibility for all that goes on. If his painfully slow rebuild is moving in the right direction, the reeling Packers are dispatched. And if not, it's fair to ask what the point is of continuing with whatever his responsibilities are.
Some of us have been done with him for a while, already, not looking at any win total for this season that would forestall a good look at alternatives, but there's a reason people are talking and writing about Fox saving his job.
There's a backdrop of cross purposes here, certainly, primarily the development of a quarterback in a hyper-conservative game plan that merely tries to score enough to not lose. It's all very strange that a losing team at a season's halfway point can look at a softening schedule and tell itself things still matter in the now.
So let's play along for the fun of it. Win another, and we'll keep pretending to believe.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Bernstein and Goff Show" in afternoon drive. You can follow him on Twitter: @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.
