We’ve been tossing around this notion since Sunday night. At some point, whilst being thrashed by the Green Bay Packers, the Chicago Bears just gave up.
The thing is, it’s subjective. No one ever really says, “Yeah, sure, we gave up.” Sometimes we assume teams give up. It’s fairly natural when you’re getting beaten soundly to pull the no más card. Of course, this is the NFL, not boxing. You get to finish the game whether you want to or not because the league needs to make more money off commercials. So what do you do? You finish it, half-assed.
Clearly, when Jay Cutler threw that fourth-quarter interception and then slowly jogged after Casey Hayward, he wasn’t giving maximum effort. There’s a good chance some guys stopped giving maximum effort after the Packers went up 28-0 or perhaps even 21-0 or 14-0.
These are the Chicago Bears we’re talking about, after all. Jay Cutler’s Chicago Bears. Tons of heart and tons of toughness.
At any rate, the Packers knew this was a very real possibility, according to receiver Randall Cobb. Get an early lead and the Bears would quit, because…
“We knew the Bears had said something about being a desperate team right now,” Cobb said. “We knew that if we got up early on them, they may lay down on us. We were able to put some points up.”
And that pretty much did it. Twenty eight unanswered in the second quarter and 42 unanswered for the half.
Game over sometime before the first half was even in the books.
We would love to know when you think the exact moment the Bears quit was. Our guess — Cutler’s first interception, because here we go again!