Last week, I wrote a somewhat scathing review of the Bears' come-from-behind win against the Packers in the Wild Card round of the playoffs. While most people were celebrating, I was critical. All year long, the Bears have been coasting on luck. Last week, I said that I suspect that luck to run out, and that I didn't believe that the Bears were actually good enough to compete with the likes of the Rams, 49ers, or Seahawks. Well, now I get to say "I told you so."

But I'm not annoyed that the Bears finally came crashing back down to Earth. I'm annoyed that I have to say "I told you so" about something else.

2 years ago, I wrote about my frustrations with 4th down decision-making. Put simply, I think that NFL coaches are far too willing to go for it on 4th down, and that they should kick field goals more often.

I bring this up because, in my opinion, it was the Bears' decision to go for it on 4th down multiple times last night that lost them the game. 3 times in the first half, the Bears were faced with 4th and short within easy field goal range. All 3 times, they went for it. Only once did they succeed. That success did lead to a touchdown.

But if the Bears had attempted all 3 field goals instead (taking back the touchdown they scored off the one successful conversion) (and assuming Cairo Santos made the kicks), then they would have scored a total of 9 points instead of 7. Had that been the case, Cole Khmet's miracle hail mary catch in the end zone with mere seconds left on the game clock would have put the Bears up by 2 points in regulation. Instead, it only tied the game, and the Bears lost in overtime.

Photo credit: AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh.

Cole Khmet's last-minute hail mary catch should have won the game, not tied it.

The most frustrating of these failed conversions was the first one, on the Bears' opening drive. The score was still 0-0, and the Bears had the opportunity to put the first points on the board. At this point, you have no idea how the game is going to go, and whether it's going to be a shoot-out or a defensive struggle. As such, I strongly feel that teams should just take the points. Get on the board. Let your defense play with a lead -- albeit a small lead.

The Bears managed to pull off yet another spectacular come-from-behind victory against the Packers in the Wild Card round of the playoffs. But I kind of wish they hadn't. Now, I'm going to be subjected to yet another 2 1/2 quarters of awful, depressing Bears' football next week.

This was the 7th such 4th quarter comeback this season, and it really does beg the question of whether the Bears are genuinely good, or if they are just lucky. Their play for the first 2 and a half quarters of football all year long has been abysmal. Fumbled snaps, penalties, receivers running the wrong routes or dropping open passes, and a defense that lets opponents march down the field with little-to-no resistance. At least special teams has been playing competently in the later stretches of the season. Cairos Santos has been reliably making his field goals, and the coverage teams aren't giving up huge returns or scores.

But then the end of the 3rd quarter rolls around, and the team goes into Madden-esque "turbo mode", and can suddenly do no wrong.

Photo credit: NFL, Amazon Prime.

Don't get cocky.

I love football. But as much as I love football, I hate watching bad football. I'm the kind of football fan who, while everyone else is clapping and cheering, I am actually yelling "What are you doing?!" at the other team when they do something stupid. Everyone else seems to think these Bears games are "thrilling"; I just think they're ugly. If this sort of thing happens once or twice per season, that's one thing. That builds character, and shows grit and determination. When almost half of the season is games like this, that signals that there is something fundamentally wrong with the team or its coaching. Just ask Vikings fans how easily this sort of "luck" can swing the other way in just a single season.

If this Bears team were genuinely good, I feel like they should be playing more competently in the first half, and then going "clutch" in the 4th quarter to seal the win. I would not expect a good team to be going down 21-3 at halftime, game after game, and relying on a fluke missed extra point to force the opponent to have to score a touchdown or bust in the closing minute to retake the lead.

If both defenses were playing great, and the halftime score were more like 10-3 or 13-6, that would be one thing. But the Bears' defense doesn't look great. They look like the proverbial stick of butter being bisected by a hot knife. The whole season, the defense's play has basically boiled down to "turnover or bust". They lead the league in takeaways, but if they don't get those takeaways, they typically give up a score.

I usually try to publish my impressions of the Bears at the end of preseason. But here we are, in week 5, the Bears are taking an early bye week, and I'm just now getting around to writing the first blog post about them this season. This is mostly due to the fact that I really haven't been able to tell what to make of the Bears yet, under first-year head coach Ben Johnson. It's been a wild, up-and-down start to the season.

The Bears looked unstoppable offensively, in the 2nd preseason game. They cruised up and down the field, everything seemed to work, and they crushed the Buffalo Bills. But the Bills weren't playing many (if any) of their starters. So ... good for you ... I guess? Your first-string unit playing a heavily-scripted gameplan steamrolled the Bills' 2nd team unit running basic coverages. It was really hard to judge the Bears after that game.

Perhaps, if the first unit played similarly well against the Chiefs' defensive starters in the following week, then I could get excited. But that didn't happen. The Bears looked sloppy and had trouble moving the ball against a Chiefs team that was playing most of its defensive starters. So that was worrisome...

The Bears did manage to win both of those games (and tie their preseason opener against the Dolphins, in which neither team played any starters). So I guess the preseason at least showed that the Bears' backups can likely be counted on in a pinch. That's something.

Photo credit: Ashlee Rezin, Sun-Times.

Ben Johnson and Caleb Williams have had a rough start to their first year together.

Then the regular season started, and the first 2 weeks did not look good. The Bears got off to an early lead against the Vikings on Monday Night in the opening week, only to melt down in the second half and loose the game. Then week 2 happened. The Lions absolutely crushed their former offensive coordinator's new team, 52-21. The offense looked bad, and the defense looked worse. Could it be that Johnson and his staff did not know how to coach and call a defensive game? If so, that's really bad, because the offense wasn't looking very good either. You would hope that an offensive-minded coach would at least move the ball and score a lot of points, even if their defense is giving up a lot of points. But you aren't going to win many games if you give up 52, no matter how good your offense is.

I was very harsh of Dan Mullen's premiere performance as UNLV's head coach, in which UNLV barely eked by with a 1-touchdown win over an FCS opponent. I even went so far as to say that I suspect he would be fired sooner rather than later. Much to my surprise, UNLV has since beaten Sam Houston and UCLA to start the season 3-0. In fact, UNLV was absolutely dominating UCLA in the first half, going up 23-3 by halftime.

The defense, in particular, looked dramatically improved in the first half against UCLA. They were playing much more disciplined. They were gap-sound, weren't giving up the huge cutback lanes that had been their Achilles heel in the first 2 weeks, and pass coverage looked tight. They even got a couple sacks! It was a dramatic turn-around.

Is the team much better than that week 0 performance against Idaho State made them look? And do I owe Dan Mullen and his staff an apology for being so harsh?

The answer is: probably.

But there are some caveats. The biggest caveat, of course, is that UNLV did not look nearly as good in the second half. They almost blew the game, giving up 20 2nd-half points, while only scoring 7 of their own, in order to win the game by a single TD. UNLV's defense couldn't get UCLA off the field. In fact, UNLV ran a whopping total of 4 offensive plays and a punt in the entire 3rd quarter, because UCLA possessed the ball for the entire rest of that quarter.

PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Marcus, Las Vegas Sun via AP

Anthony Colandrea was forced to play "hero ball" too often for comfort.

Moreso, I still have big concerns with the offense -- the line in particular. Even though UNLV's offense appeared to be rolling while they put up 23 first-half points, the offensive performance was a bit rough. Most of that production came on improvisation on broken plays. Quarterback Anthony Colandrea was frequently forced to scramble, and was lucky that his receivers were consistently able to come back towards him and catch passes on the perimeter. And when there weren't receivers open at all, Colandrea was usually able to find a soft spot in the defense and scramble for first downs.

Well, it was good while it lasted, I guess.

Dan Mullen is not a replacement for Barry Odom. Honestly, I didn't expect that anybody would be. Odom seemed like a hard-ass coach who pushed his players to get the most out of them. With the sole exception of that second Championship loss to Boise State before he departed for Purdue, Odom's teams always looked ready to play. They played fast, intense, smart, and disciplined.

Dan Mullen's premiere UNLV team was none of those things. They walked onto the home turf as 30-point favorites against an FCS team that was below average, even for an FCS team. And yet, for the first half (or so) of that game, you might have thought that UNLV was the FCS team.

The defense, in particular, looked woefully un-prepared to play in the first quarter or 2. They were slow, out-of-position, and consistently missed tackles. Nobody seemed to play with any gap discipline or containment. Idaho State's offensive line was able to wash the entire defense down and create cutback lanes large enough to cruise a battleship through. And blown coverages in the secondary lead to a couple more go-ahead scores for Idaho State.

The offense wasn't much better though. The offensive scheme was pedestrian, as it lacked Brennan Marrion's novel "Go-Go" spark. The offensive line couldn't hold blocks, and both QBs were forced into frequent panic situations in which they had to scramble for their lives.

PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Marcus, Las Vegas Sun.

UNLV showed poor gap discipline and containment, opening huge holes for Idaho State.

Both sides of the ball were also plagued with penalties. Over 90 yards of penalties, I think. Worse yet, 2 missed [relatively easy] field goals showed that special teams also lacks discipline and focus.

It was bad!