More photos » by Paul Sakuma - AP

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Here are my quick thoughts on the game:

1) I know Cutler threw five picks and I'm not making excuses for him. Realistically, a few of them aren't his fault.

2) The University of Northern Iowa (where I currently go) has a better OL than the Chicago Bears. Good God, I'm sick of them.

3) Tommie, kudos for showing up yesterday. Keep that effort up.

4) Our defense also showed up. Against a crappy QB. So congrats, D.

5) Only positive thing about this game: We had five turnovers and still held them to 10 points. Again, see point #4.

6) I'm really glad that I'm going to be out and about in Chicago and not on WCG today listening to everyone call for someone's head.

7) I'm also going to the Bulls game tomorrow. I'm hoping I'll be lucky enough to watch one Chicago team have a good game.

Anyways, let's go.

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More photos » by Charles Rex Arbogast - AP

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I really don't know what to make of this game....there were some positive things and some lingering questions that we can take from this game.

I'll run through the 5 things I know:

1) Matt Forte is still not right

I'm going to stress this early: It's not all of his fault. Our OL is abysmal.

At the same time, some of it is his fault. I don't know why but he's developed "Ceddy feet" - Benson used to always shuffle, hesitate, and hit the hole. Unfortunately, Forte has found that habit to be quite delightful. He needs to change that ASAP.

2) Jay Cutler will still have to lead this team

Whether we go 13-3 or 4-12, this is Jay's team. He didn't have the best performance today, but it was good enough. I was impressed with him throwing a few balls away - that's something I haven't seen him do in quite a while.

Also, he's a tough SOB. Having a 350 lbs angry man land on you can't feel good, but he hopped up and was ready to roll.

And I do like his moxie. I like having our QB yelling at the other team's DC. Go ahead and think about past Bears QB's who would have done the same AND have his play back it up. I'm coming up with a grand total of none.

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More photos » by Ed Reinke - AP

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This installation of the Quotables is a little different from the standard. I'm tossing in a few quotes at the end, but I'm going to use the majority of this space to go on a few rants.

#1: Ron Turner deserves some blame

Key word here is some. Ron's play calling has been good at times, bad at others. We all know this. However, I don't want to continually read this week that "Ron Turner deserves to be fired because he sucks." Blanket statements such as that don't prove anything.

Does he deserve blame for continually trying to run the ball when it's obvious that either Forte is still nursing an injury and/or our OL sucks? Yeah, somewhat. But he's also dialed up some good plays. Take the good with the bad.

And, just for good measure, think about 2008. We had a crappy offense all the way around, and yet we still were close to making the playoffs. Ron Turner was fantastic last year.

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More photos » by John Amis - AP

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My job finally ended today, so I was able to watch the game last night. Huzzah! Unfortunately, it went downhill from there. Let me run through my quick thoughts before we get to the good stuff:

1) Jay Cutler. First pick? On him. Second pick? Not so much. I took a look at it again (thank God for DVR) and it does look like there was some miscommunication between Cutler and Olsen.

Let's give Cutler some credit. He was able to make plays with his feet and he took some shots by staying in the pocket and waiting for plays to develop.

2) Our offensive line is awful. Seriously. God f****** awful. They made stupid plays at the absolute worse time. Orlando Pace = bad. Frank Omiyale = needs to leave. Chris Williams = somewhat bad. Regardless, we really need to get it figured out, because either Cutler will get killed or Forte will really turn into #3.

3) Look, Matt Forte may be partially bad because of our OL. At the same time, he's a very, very tentative runner this year. I have no idea why, but he's running scared this year. Even when he's in the open field, he looks scared. When Garrett Wolfe was in, he was hitting the hole quickly and making sure he's getting some sort of positive yardage. As soon as one defender shows up, Forte slows down. No idea why.

There are too many bad things to cover, so I'm not going to. Let's move on. 

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