Giants 21, BEARS 16: No One Ever Is To Blame

How do you lose a game like that?

No, seriously, I’m asking: How did the BEARS manage to lose a game in which they largely outplayed the Giants and won the turnover battle by four? That’s just not supposed to happen.

You can’t blame Rex Grossman for the 21-16 loss to the Giants. He had 296 yards with no interceptions and no fumbles lost.

You can’t blame the running game. It was certainly no worse than it’s been with Cedric Benson, and there were a couple series where Adrian Peterson fought through tackles to pick up first downs that Benson probably wouldn’t have made.

You can’t really blame the defense. Although they did give up a few too many yards (154) to Derrick Ward, and two long touchdown drives in the fourth quarter (which is yet another case of the defense only playing three good quarters this year), they also forced four turnovers.

The first one of those, an interception by Brian Urlacher, led to the BEARS’ first touchdown, as Grossman confidently led the offense down the field with the help of a competent running back. That’s how the BEARS found success last year, and that’s the way things were supposed to work this year, but they never got into the end zone again on Sunday.

So maybe things would have been different if Devin Hester had caught that second-quarter bomb from Grossman when he slipped behind the defense. That would have given the BEARS a 14-0 lead; instead, the drive ended with a shanked punt from the BEARS’ 1-yard line and the Giants took advantage with a game-tying touchdown drive.

But you can’t blame Hester for anything, because if you were to make a list of the BEARS players ranked by how much each had to do with what went wrong this year, Hester would be the absolute last name on that list.

Things certainly would have been different if the offensive line had given Grossman more protection. He was hurried all day and sacked six times – twice with the BEARS in the red zone. But it’s hard to tell if that was truly because of poor offensive line play or just a playoff-worthy defense for the Giants.

At any rate, the bottom line is that the BEARS had any lingering playoff hopes extinguished on a day in which they probably played their second most complete game of the season (the win over Green Bay being the first). And on the day when I need to blame someone most of all, there’s no blame to go around. I think I want a no-fault divorce from this team.