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....the defense was overrated, and the offense has SERIOUS ISSUES with it's lack of an ability to CONSISTENTLY move the football and put up points, and it has had them all year long. Parkey missing that kick was just the absurd icing on the cake.

I am sorry, but IF you are an ELITE DEFENSE, you do NOT give up a game winning drive to a mediocre backup QB like Nick Foles when your offense has finally given you the lead...all this supposedly elite defense had to do was generate ONE FINAL STOP with the season on the line, and they played like dogs. If you are an ELITE DEFENSE, you FIND A WAY to stop that shitty QB and that shitty team from driving down the field on you to retake the lead when then entire season is on the line. Bottom line...this was a good defense, but it was far from a DOMINANT/ELITE/HISTORIC DEFENSE which all of us desperately wanted to believe it was. Forget about comparing them to the greatest defense of all-time, the '85 Bears, they don't even compare to defenses like the Legion of Boom, and I personally detested those jerk-offs.

Also, this offense had better wake up next year. If Nagy is the offensive/playcalling genius we all want to believe he is, he had damn well better find a way to field and offense that can CONSISTENTLY move the ball up and down the field at will on people, and which can average near 30 points a game..and I am not talking about relying on the defense to contribute scores to inflate that total. I am talking about the offense itself moving the ball and scoring consistently. Enough of this "offense looks like utter dogsh*t for 2-3 quarters, but then plays great and looks great for a quarter or a half and we all praise Nagy as the second coming of Bill Walsh/Don Coryell/Sid Gillman.

If this offense continues to look like inconsistent crap next year, then the problem is either Nagy is overrated as a playcaller/offensive genius, Trubisky is too limited to fully take advantage or Nagy's supposed genius, or a combination of the two. We can all praise Nagy as a phenomenal HC bc we won 12 games this year...but that defense (which again was far from historic or elite) was already in place with Fangio as DC and then added Mack and got career years from guys like Fuller and Jackson and Hicks. Nagy was brought in to coach up Trubisky and to actually give the Bears a high-scoring, wide open, exciting offense. We won this year by primarily relying on the defense, while hoping that the offense just limited its mistakes and didn't put the defense in a bad position, which is the boring way we have always had to win. Nagy was brought in to change that tired, cliche Chicago Bears win game 17-14 with 2 defensive touchdowns dynamic, and the jury is still out on whether or not he is going to prove capable of doing that.

Bottom line-we won 12 games in a really sh*itty division (Packers were a trainwreck all year, Lions suck and the Vikings were mediocre and one of the biggest disappointments in the league) with a good but far from elite defense and a mediocre, inconsistent offense. This team also lost to two utterly craptastic teams -Miami with Brock freakin' Osweiler at QB and New York. The fact that we lost at home to that dogsh*t Eagles team with their crappy QB (I don't give a rip what they have one, they were and he is the worst SB-winning team and QB in recent memory, just another mediocre team with a mediocre coach rewarded for their mediocrity in these mediocre times) proves that this Bears team was never as good as we all tried to convince ourselves it was to begin with.

Next year will show us whether or not Nagy and/or Trubisky are the real deal or whether or not this year was just another classic "Chicago Bears flash in the pan season."

I know fans are angry, but don't be willfully dense.

I know mods are angry, but don't be willfully ignorant and blind.

Reign in your meatballs.

1) overrated D? You can argue that this is what all Ds want, game on the line, it all rests on them. They didn't get the job done, but overrated? Wow.

2) Nick foles mediocre qb? He won a Super Bowl and he has played damn well since coming back in. you are the first I have heard call him that.

First year coach. young qb in the first year of a new offense.

Damn dude, go smoke a joint or something. It is not as bleak as you think.

The other team gets paid too, as I recall. Frequently, they're a big part of the reason one team looks inconsistent, overrated, etc.

BuddyRyans46...I get the frustration man, but I think your letting the emotions run a bit wild.
1. Our defense is no overrated, it is legit. Legit defenses lose sometimes, but holding a typically high scoring team to 16 is not over-rated.

2. The offense is still learning itself, it's players, and its play caller are all learning; and in spite of the it had a good season with room for improvement and reason to believe that improvement will occur. It takes more than a single season. That's just reality. Accepting it will let you see the season for what it was and enjoy it with hope for the future. Denying reality will lead to absolutist thinking and your own suffering.

3. Bottom line is we won 12 games, only 6 of those against our division which had two other teams at the end fighting for playoff life in the final couple weeks. Instead of denigrating the quality of our wins, why not just look at the fact that our record was 1 game shy of equally our cumulative record for 3 years in a row combined? Your not even glass 1/2 empty man, your looking at it 80% full and bitching about the 20% of air at the top.

4. Go check out an article I just posted on Trubisky's growth across the season, ponder it, and let yourself feel OK about where we are going. Did you really think we'd win the Sb this year or even make the playoffs? We got a team to cheer for again...don't let the sky fall on your head.

The original post is typical Bears meatball fandom. Criticism with no sense of context.

1) The defense was elite. All of the statistics bare that out. It held the defending champions to 16 points. The Eagles have one of the best OL's in the league.
2) This is the first year of the Nagy/Trubisky relationship. To expect a wild, dynamic, intact offense year one is ridiculous. There is a reason Mahomes sat out an entire year in preparation for this offense.
3) In response to the Miami game. Other than the heat, and an injured Mack. You are aware that Osweiler ran that offense in Denver under Gase, right? He knew it better than Tannehill.

That was a full meatball post, with nothing grounded in reality. Slow your roll dude.

lol

How'd Buddy ever make it through Mel Tucker's defense without knocking himself off!?!?!

On the defense being "far from historic or elite", you have to keep in mind that they are changing the rules every year to make it harder on defenses and easier on offenses. So you need to keep that in context. Unless NFL rules reverse course, which is so unlikely it's not even worth considering, having a defense today that would qualify as "historic" is an impossible measuring stick. And say what you want about the term "elite", but the whole country thinks that adjective applied to our defense. So you should probably temper your expectations.

ELITE DEFENCES DON'T ALLOW THE OTHER TEAM TO SCORE. BURN IT TO THE GROUND.

Otis Day wrote:1) overrated D? You can argue that this is what all Ds want, game on the line, it all rests on them. They didn't get the job done, but overrated? Wow.

2) Nick foles mediocre qb? He won a Super Bowl and he has played damn well since coming back in. you are the first I have heard call him that.

First year coach. young qb in the first year of a new offense.

Damn dude, go smoke a joint or something. It is not as bleak as you think.

agreed ... seems the venom from losing the game is over riding some basic observations

I agree with this whole post. We should give up zero points all season. And score at least two defensive touchdowns and three safeties per game. Otherwise the defense is a joke.

I mostly agree that the team didn't deserve to win. The ones who did deserve to win were Cohen, Trubisky, and Robinson for being clutch on the last drive/kick return.

The defense choked, giving up the last TD. O'Donnell choked with a 37 yard punt. And, well, we all know who put the final choke in on this loss.

yeah, what is up with O'Donnell? "Thunderpunt" has been pretty routinely impotent in his efforts

so perhaps the Bears should wipe the slate clean of all of their kickers

by the way, Tress Way, the guy cut to make room for O'Donnell, has been all pro caliber on a shitty Redskins team ... maybe that is because he gets more opportunities to punt?

O'Donnell did drop a dime at like the 3 inch line too... so lets not forget the good punts he has had in his career. He shanked one at a really bad time, but overall the Bears could do worse.

wab wrote:O'Donnell did drop a dime at like the 3 inch line too... so lets not forget the good punts he has had in his career. He shanked one at a really bad time, but overall the Bears could do worse.

good call - I forgot about that one

We won on two of the three areas in that game.
The offense wasn't great but was good enough to win.
The defense was off the flipping charts again.
Special teams were good when it didn't matter and stunk to wholly hell when it did. The obvious and that botched punt at the wrong time.

We need to Bring Taub back no matter the cost.