The final score of 34 to 31 in favor of the Vikings tells the tale of a game that the Bears should have won.  When the Bears put up 31 points, they should be able to post a victory.  To let a team even come within striking distance of such a high score betrays a complete and utter failure by the defense to stem the bleeding caused early on by the “other” Adrian Peterson.  To not adjust the defense to deal with a running game that completely ran over Urlacher and all the rest of the Monsters of the Midway is a monstrous failure on the part of not even

the defense themselves, but on defensive coordinator, Bob Babich, and head coach Lovie Smith.  To watch a defense that held two of the NFL’s top offensive dynamos, LaDanian Tomlinson and Larry Johnson, to virtually zero yards in the opening games now suffer such a complete and utter collapse is literally painful to watch.  And watching this team under-perform on an almost weekly basis is really becoming a pain to watch as it seems hardly anything is being done to right this sinking ship.

The Bears are a team that has been built on defense for their entire storied history.  And now it seems that their once mighty "D" has gone into an early hibernation as a single running back managed to virtually outperform the entire offensive output of the Chicago Bears. 

Which brings me to what may be the most glaring flaw in the Bears’ performance last Sunday: the offensive explosion that came too late to truly matter. 

With less than five minutes left in the game, the Bears put 14 points on the board only to kickoff directly to Adrian Peterson who in turn did his best Devin Hester impression and garnered an impressive return to put the Vikings in field goal range.  A field goal that won the game for Minnesota as the time expired along with any realistic hopes of the Bears winning their division.

But, what if the Bears hadn’t waited until the closing seconds of the game to really open up their offense?  What if the Bears had, instead of throwing the ball in desperation as they lay in the final throes of a meltdown, decided to take a few shots downfield in the early stages of the game?  Perhaps this would have given the defense some breathing room and a confidence that was sorely missing from a game that should never have been as close as it became.  True, Hester did manage to give the Bears the aforementioned breathing room in terms of yet another incredible return for a touchdown, but the glimmer of glory that shone through the clouds in the dying moments of the game would have shone through all the brighter had the Bears opened the game with an offensive salvo that could have had a silencing effect on Minnesota and may have made all the difference in the game and, ultimately, the season.

So, as the Bears sit languishing in the cellar of the Central, we must look ahead to next week and, realistically, to next season.  To continue to play conservatively and to continue to not make the proper adjustments when a game has clearly fallen from our grasp is to continue to settle for failure and doom ourselves to a dismal season.  Is it too early to count the Bears out?  Perhaps, but it may also be too late to even hope for the wild card slot if we don’t learn from the fiasco of last Sunday.  Each game from here on out is a must-win for us and a must-lose for the rest of our division.  And it’s high time the Chicago Bears started playing like it.

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