by Dan Peters

After a loss last week to the Seattle Seahawks, The Bears had the opportunity to take a firm grip on the NFC North with a victory over the Redskins. But the team we saw and knew in the pre-season again showed up on another near perfect day for football at Soldier Field

The best receiver on the field?
 
Maybe Jay Cutler had some lingering effects from that concussion a few weeks ago. He was right on target for Deangelo Hall, for four excellent passes; unfortunately he played for the opposing team, the Redskins.
 
Hall tied a NFL record for interceptions Sunday. He got four. It has only been done nineteen times in NFL history. Oh and yes it was also a new Bears record as well..
 
Cutler said he would not have changed anything and would still throw in his direction.. Yes he still has some lingering effects if he thinks that way. But he did take the blame for his mistakes.
 
“I’ll take them all,” Cutler said. “Obviously, it’s very discouraging right now. We let a game get away from us. The defense has every right to be mad at us. We blew that game offensively, and most of that falls on my shoulders.”

The defense was the lone bright spot in the game, but they too could not convert on all of the Redskins mistakes.
 
The defense had given the Bears a 7-0  lead when D.J. Moore returned a  McNabb interception 54 yards for a TD midway through the first quarter. Moore blitzed on the play, but McNabb slipped out of his grasp. The veteran quarterback’s pass was then deflected into the air by Israel Idonije and caught by Moore, who dashed untouched into the end zone for his first NFL touchdown.
 
The Best quarterback in the game?

“You can’t turn the ball over that many times,” said Coach Lovie Smith. “It’s kind of as simple as that.”

 “There are a lot of things we would like to do differently, a lot of things I would like to do differently,” Smith told reporters Monday. “You guys want to know about whether I should have thrown the red flag on the one-yard fumble down by the end zone. Yes, I should have, looking at it of course in hindsight.

“Normally if there’s a critical situation, I throw it whether I have a good look or not on it. I didn’t have a great look. I understand the reasons why, but that was a critical play in the game. I need to be able to make that call.”

Lovie Smith’s decision to keep the red flag in his pocket was that he had unsuccessfully challenged the previous play, losing a timeout. The Bears felt that receiver Earl Bennett had scored on a long reception, but he was ruled down at the 1. A replay review confirmed the call on the field.

“I had just used one up before that, and at the time I thought we were in control of the game,” Smith said. “We’ve given the opponent the ball on the one-yard line before and forced them to punt it. I felt like we would get the ball back right away, which we did, and would be able to get it back down.”
Where do they go from here?

"Offensively, we need to make some steps," said Cutler, who was sacked four times in Sunday's loss. "We need to keep going. It's very devastating right now, very disappointing.

"There are some [good] things that happened out there that we haven't done in the past. We hit some throws, we hit some runs, we hit some stuff that the details of this offense have been lacking in the past, which is a good thing.

"Then we go back and we have four picks and a couple fumbles, and that's the difference in the ballgame.

That can't happen. The defense has just got to keep doing what they're doing. They're the reason we have four wins. The offense has got to get up to their level."

The Bears have two weeks to get it together. They have a bye next week and then travel to Toronto to take on the winless Buffalo Bills. It will be a great way for the Bears to try some new things against arguably one of the worst teams in the National Football League.

Then the Vikings will come to town.. And they are never easy to play especially if Favre is playing and is in prime form.