The Bears are now a more intelligent team.

They had long since acquired a taste for defeat, and in the Denver game, they expanded that taste to include a taste for blowing large leads.

They’re specialising now. It’s currently losing significant leads to strong teams.

Trotting out the old degree of difficulty explanation, Justin Fields and coach Matt Eberflus attempted to wrap a rose-colored bow around a 31-26 pile of garbage in Detroit.

Fields remarked, “We just played like a heck of a team.”

You didn’t, oh no.

As if this is a suitable justification for allowing a 12-point advantage to vanish so quickly that the Bears had time to attempt a comeback of their own.

At that point, all it took for them to get to the end zone was one play. It was their own end zone, of course.

The fact that this was a formidable foe only served to highlight how crushing a loss they took.

This is what teams that lose do. They drop games that they ought to win. They drop games that they ought to lose. They appear to have already won the games they lose.

The Bears gave up a 73-yard drive without a single third down until Jahmyr Gibbs’ run to the 1-yard line just before David Montgomery’s game-winning touchdown. They also allowed receivers to get behind their veteran safety and their self-declared All-Pro cornerback in zone coverage, making great defensive plays like interceptions by Tyrique Stevenson, Tremaine Edmunds, and T.J. Edwards go for nothing.

When you give the opposition just 19 minutes and 36 seconds to possess the ball and only give up one turnover due to a Tyler Scott fumble, it’s difficult to lose a game. They would have fared better had Scott simply failed to catch the crucial deep ball that he fumbled earlier in the game.

It’s also difficult to lose after outrushing your opponent by 68 yards and taking it away four times.

After the game, Stevenson told reporters, “It’s unexplainable,” revealing his inexperience as a rookie.

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Fields spent an excessive amount of time scrambling or zone reading during the 183 yards. With just 28 carries, the running backs only managed 79 yards. Fields’ 5.8-yard run was below his typical level of performance. Even though they ran for 183 yards, Khalil Herbert was only able to gain 1 yard on two carries when they really needed the rushing yards. In an attempt to extend the game, they ended up only using 15 seconds before punting back to the Lions, who went on to win the game.

A quarterback should win a game with a passer rating of 105.2 and an average of 7.3 yards per attempt, especially if their offense ran for 183 yards. Except when the game was in jeopardy, Fields was razor sharp. Then, not expecting the rush, he kind of walked straight into Aidan Hutchinson for the game-winning strip sack and safety. It was expected that DJ Moore would have seven receptions for 96 yards with Fields at his back.

Tyler Scott was supposed to be a fantastic route runner, but he lost sight of the ball as he slowed down to try to catch a deep ball for the game-winning first down. At the end of the game, Darnell Williams’ mishandled attempt to block Hutchinson’s pass prevented a potential game-winning field goal drive and instead led to a safety.