Say Goodbye To The Playoffs

Well the Bears can say goodbye to the playoffs after losing to the Lions 16-7 on Sunday at Soldier Field. There will be no defense of their NFC championship. There will be no division championship.

There won't be anything but eight more games of frustration having to watch this team. The only thing the Bears do consistently is play inconsistently. One week the offense and defense look like they're finally coming around, and then the next week they look like they did yesterday.

Missed tackles, dropped passes, turnovers, anything that can hurt the team, the Bears find a way to do it.

The Lions managed 365 yards of offense against the Bears yesterday, and did a great job of keeping the ball away from Devin Hester. Kevin Jones, in only his second game of the season, rushed for 105 yards and a touchdown on 23 carries.

Cedric Benson meanwhile could only manage 50 yards on 13 carries. That's a whopping 3.8 yards per carry, which isn't exactly good, but I'm guessing it's probably one of Benson's better averages this season.

Brian Griese threw for 208 yards and a touchdown, but the four interceptions he threw didn't help much. What made it worse was that three of the four interceptions came in the end zone.

That's three touchdowns the Lions took away. Those touchdowns probably would have made a difference, but at the same time, who's to say the Lions wouldn't have answered each of those touchdowns with ones of their own?

To make things worse, it appears that Brian Urlacher has a serious problem with his back right now.

In an exclusive interview with FOX Sports, Urlacher finally revealed he's been fighting through a back injury that's caused pain and problems.

"It's a problem that started all the way back in camp," Urlacher said. "We've done x-rays, bone scans, MRI's, cat scans and this week I flew to Pittsburgh and met with a specialist. He confirmed what the team told me, that they think it's an arthritis type of thing. The thing that's so frustrating is there is no clear-cut solution to give me relief. I just have to deal with the pain."

So now Urlacher has an arthritic back. Fantastic. I'm no doctor, but the last time I checked, I'm pretty sure arthritis isn't one of those injuries that goes away after a few weeks. This is going to effect Urlacher for the rest of his career.

We may start to see a serious decline in his play over the rest of this season, and into next as well. All of which means I hope the Bears are seriously reconsidering their stance on what they want to do with Lance Briggs. It's already become pretty obvious this season that he is the best player on the defense right now, so losing him is already a scary possibility. Now that we know of Urlacher's back, it's terrifying.

If there's any good news to report today, it's that the Bears don't have to play next Sunday. So that means we won't have to watch them.

Monster of the Midway

• Lance Briggs - I wanted to give this to Hester again. After all, the one time he was able to return a punt, he returned it 39 yards and set the Bears up for the only touchdown they scored yesterday. But I'm going to give it to Briggs, because he was the only person on defense yesterday who didn't do something to piss me off. He didn't over pursue on any plays. He didn't miss any tackles that I noticed. He just made plays, which is what he always does, so he gets the award today.

Dumbass of the Day

• Brian Griese - It's only fair that Griese be here even though yesterday's game wasn't completely his fault. But if you took Griese's stats and credited them to Rex Grossman, we'd be all over him. You can't throw four interceptions and expect to win a game, especially when three of them come in the end zone.