Bear & Balanced: The Bears make everything difficult

It’s painful watching the Chicago Bears play because even when things are going well, we know that something “Bearsy” is bound to happen. It’s just a matter of time. Good teams can fight through adversity, but the Bears are a bad football team, and bad football teams can’t overcome mistakes.

Even though the Bears led the Denver Broncos 28 to 7 behind nearly three-quarters of perfect play from Justin Fields, we knew it was too good to be true.

Denver’s offense scored a touchdown at the end of the third. They got another tuddy midway through the fourth. A sack and a fumble from Fields led to a scoop and score for the Broncos. Chicago drove 57 yards on their next possession before failing on a 4th and 1 from Denver’s 18-yard line. Russell Wilson to Marvin Mims Jr. for 48 yards on the very next play got the Broncos in field goal range, then four plays later, a 52-yard field goal gave them the lead.

The Bears had 1:46 and a time out to play with, but a miscommunication between Fields and Cole Kmet led to the game-ending interception.

Fields’ mistakes hurt, but so did the 10 penalties (the most since 2021), the conservative play calling, and the defense’s inability to make a play.

And to think, the Bears get to take this show on the road for a nationally televised game in three days.

Check out me and Jeff Berckes on our Bear & Balanced here, or come hang out with us live on 2nd City Gridiron at 6:00 p.m. (CT).

Here's our usual bullet point outline of Bear & Balanced.

• Intro: We'll both share some general thoughts about the game.
• Trench Tribute: This is our weekly pick for lineman of the game.
• Sweet Tweets: We're both active on social media — so be sure you're all following us at @gridironborn & @wiltfongjr — and we highlight one Twitter interaction/Tweet each week.
• Caught up in a numbers game: This segment has us featuring one number/statistic that we found interesting from the game.
• The Fields Report: We talk about quarterback Justin Fields before we take our commercial break.
• The 3 Bears: You all know the story of the Three Bears, so in this porridge-themed portion of the show, we give our picks for the Bear that was hot, the Bear that was cold, and the Bear that was just right in the game against the Broncos.

You can also listen to the podcast version here or download it wherever you get your pods:

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