The Bears dropped to 1-12 in games against the Packers started by quarterback Jay Cutler in a 31-23 loss that fell out of their reach when Cutler threw a fourth quarter interception.
It was the 23rd interception that Cutler’s thrown in games against the Packers, but the talk in the Bears locker room after the game wasn’t about the same old Cutler. Left tackle Jermon Bushrod said Cutler did a “tremendous job” of managing the offense, right tackle Kyle Long said the quarterback was “lights out” and coach John Fox added to the praise for Cutler’s work in his first game running Adam Gase’s offense.
“I thought Jay did a real good job,” Fox said, via ESPNChicago.com. “His pocket awareness -- he had a couple of scrambles in there that I think were heads-up plays. He stepped up into the pocket. But against this football team, we weren’t quite as good as we needed to be.”
That last point feels like the biggest takeaway from the game. Things went about as well as the Bears could have hoped defensively against the Packers, Matt Forte ran the ball effectively on his way to 141 yards and Cutler avoided crushing mistakes until that late interception, but it still wasn’t enough to win. Fox’s charge is getting the team to do that consistently while finding the pieces that will enable them to wind up on the right side of the scoreboard in the weeks to come.