Taking possession of the ball on the 7-yard line with 39 seconds left in the first half of Saturday night's 14-9 exhibition loss to the Cardinals, quarterback Jay Cutler took a knee.
Rather than try to simulate a 2-minute-drill situation for the No. 1 offense that surely will come up in the regular season, coach Lovie Smith chose the safe route rather than risk a sack and potential injury to Cutler.
Smith clearly didn't trust his offense to protect the quarterback or the football.
Neither should you.
If you're the Colts or another model of NFL consistency, you can dismiss chronic preseason problems as an aberration. If you're the Bears you have no such luxury and likely fear a trend. You certainly sense a familiar doom.
After watching the Bears' offense sputter again, I'm not sure the Cardinals miss Kurt Warner as much as Mike Martz does.
I still believe Cutler will be the least of the Bears' problems by the time the Lions arrive here for the season opener. But in the third exhibition game considered the most accurate barometer of success, Cutler's play guaranteed high pressure readings will remain around Halas Hall.
"Our offensive line needs to look at the tape, I need to look at the tape," Cutler said.
The eye in the sky doesn't lie. So far the Bears' offense just makes you want to look away.
"We're not playing good enough football right now, it's as simple as that," Smith said.
Smith sought to stem any civic panic over seeing the Bears regress again by calling the game "a glorified practice." I doubt the Bears' ticket office appreciates Smith reminding 60,834 paying customers exactly what they paid for, and you can bet he would assign a different value to the game if the Bears had resembled a playoff team.
But Smith's point is well-taken. Indeed the Bears treated this like a lazy afternoon in Bourbonnais and most alarming was Cutler looking like, well, the quarterback who threw 26 interceptions last year.
For the Bears to avoid disaster in '10, they need their best offensive player to play like it. Every game. Saturday night provided an ugly glimpse of what happens when he doesn't.
Cutler completed 10 of 20 passes for 129 yards and two interceptions for a Jonathan Quinn-like passer rating of 31. You can blame the four sacks for Cutler's poor numbers, but you would be kidding yourself.
It's OK if Cutler isn't the best quarterback on the field if the guy outplaying him is Tony Romo or Brett Favre or Aaron Rodgers. When it's Derek Anderson, you give thanks there's a baseball pennant race to keep Chicago's interest until hockey season.
Cutler's first interception hung in the air too long — though he intimated after the game he and Johnny Knox had a communication issue. His second never should have been thrown. Even on the longest completion of the game, a 41-yarder to Knox, had Cutler not underthrown the ball the play would have gone for a touchdown.
If you saw Cutler put the ball in the only window it would fit for a 14-yard completion to Knox, you witnessed the only pass play where everything went right.
"It's been up and down, like a roller coaster," Cutler said.
Buckle up. The lone highlight from the running game came courtesy of Chester Taylor's nifty 34-yard cutback that reinforced the Bears have two good backs. Maybe they should consider getting off the bus running again until defenses stop running circles around them on pass plays.
At least the attention paid Cutler's struggles will distract Bears Nation briefly from left tackle Chris Williams' shortcomings, but obviously those didn't go away either. A week after giving up three sacks, Williams did little to alleviate concerns, giving up a sack-and-strip by Calais Campbell.
Martz indeed may have 37 different ways to protect Williams with his scheme, but if a starting left tackle can't win a one-on-one battle, all the wizardry in the world can't hide the fact that he's a liability. It didn't look more promising on the other side, where right tackle Frank Omiyale was flagged for two holding penalties.
Remember when Martz said he loved his tackles? It's time for some tough love from the coaching staff if this offense — if this team — has any chance of resembling a competitive, professional outfit in two weeks.
Cutler burnt two timeouts in the first quarter because of confusion. The trickery intended to free up Devin Hester only foiled the Bears. Hester dropped a shotgun snap out of the Wildcat formation and was thrown for an 8-yard loss on a reverse. Then he dropped a bomb many No. 1 receivers catch.
The Bears badly needed to create a feel-good vibe to prove all the internal optimism was warranted. For a second straight week, the defense missed tackles and assignments, the offensive line missed blocks and we all missed out on a chance to see what made everybody so optimistic.
I'm not.
If the third exhibition game really provides the truest indication of regular-season success, then 8-8 looks like a best-case scenario. The Bears starters played so poorly in spurts that Forbes Magazine's scathing rebuke of the franchise's financial underperformance represented the good news of the week.
The only thing the Bears looked ready for after the third preseason game was more practice. And not the glorified kind.
