Improvement

So the narrative that began in the 2nd quarter and has continued in the 3rd quarter of the season is what is going to happen next year. I was mostly on board with that narrative after last week's lost to San Francisco. That is, until I saw that the Bears at 4-5 still have a chance at the playoffs with the Wild Card leaders only at 5-4. There are 5 teams between the Bears and a spot. I still think this team will not make it, but its something to think about.

I also think there were some encouraging signs from Thursday's game, of course anything would mostly be encouraging after the Cardinal's game. But I'll start with the bad.

• The Bad. Penalties and Turnovers absolute killed the Bears. Offensive mistakes lost a very winnable game. The Bears finished with 10 penalties for 75 yards along with 5 interceptions. Many of the holding, false start, and unsportsmanlike conduct are mental errors and should be fixable. I'm going to blame half (2.5) of the interceptions on Cutler. The interceptions at the goal line were dumb and the interception where the ref got in the way he probably should have seen. Hester falling on the turf and the DB knocking down Kellen Davis are ones I'm not going to blame him for.
• The Good. The defense after the Cardinals disaster played well only giving up 10 points and 216 yards. The D-line looked a lot better, I'm particularly remembering a Tommie Harris run stop behind the line and a number of times Alex Smith was under pressure.
• The Encouraging. Despite the turnover problems, the offense was still able to move the ball with 350 total yards. The offensive line seems to be giving Cutler a little more time and those screen plays to Forte have looked great. Might there be a link between those two? I've already said that the defense looked better last week and the special teams have been pretty solid, save for a couple awful looking returns.

Looking ahead this week's Sunday night game is looking pivotal if the Bears want to sneak into the playoffs. The Eagles along with the Packers (who we play in Week 14) are both ahead of us in the wild card. I know it's been looking gloomy but if somehow this team puts together a solid game (with both offense and defense playing decently) against the Eagles, we would be a step closer to NFL relevance.