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Bears going nowhere fast

By the time quarterback Caleb Hanie was sacked on back-to-back snaps with a little more than 10 minutes remaining in Sunday's game, more than half of the Soldier Field crowd already had given up and gone home.

And that's where the Bears will be heading, immediately after the regular-season finale at Minnesota on New Year's Day.

While the Bears aren't yet mathematically eliminated from the postseason, that seems like a formality.

Sending this team to the playoffs would be an embarrassment to the NFL, the Bears' organization and the memory of George S. Halas.

After being outscored 31-0 at home in the second half of a 38-14 loss to a mediocre Seattle Seahawks team, the season can't be over soon enough for the Bears (7-7), who have lost four straight and are on life support.

At this point, pulling the plug would be the humane thing to do.

“This is not our team,” linebacker Brian Urlacher said. “This is not how we're supposed to play. This is not how we should play. It doesn't matter who is playing quarterback. Our defense has to play better. That's all there is to it.”

Sadly, for them, this is the Bears' team. As legendary coach Bill Parcells said, “You are what your record says you are.”

It took less than four minutes on a sunny Sunday for the Bears' situation on offense to go from bad to worse.

That's when Johnny Knox, the team leader in receiving yards, was knocked out of the game as he scrambled to recover a fumble he lost after a 17-yard reception.

As Knox dove for the ball, his body was bent backward grotesquely when he collided with Seahawks defensive end Anthony Hargrove.

Knox will have back surgery Monday to stabilize a vertebra in his lower back and is expected to make a full recovery.

After that injury, the Bears' most lopsided loss of the season really got ugly.

For the third time in his four starts, all losses, Hanie was intercepted three times. He completed 10 of 23 passes for 111 yards and finished with a 33.3 passer rating, only slightly lower than his 41.8 mark for the season.

Mercifully he was pulled in favor of Josh McCown, who threw 2 passes, 1 to teammate Kahlil Bell and 1 to Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman.

The official demise of the Bears — and possibly of Hanie's NFL career — began with a 50-second horror show early in the third quarter. It ended with the Seahawks' second pick-6 of Hanie.

“First off, we're disappointed in our team and how we've played the last four weeks,” coach Lovie Smith said. “Of course Caleb is a large part of that. It's hard when you don't get more production from the quarterback position.

“But we haven't played as well as we need to.”

Marshawn Lynch's 3-yard touchdown run tied the game at 14-all.

On the Bears' ensuing possession, Hanie was under pressure from linebacker K.J. Wright, who was in his face immediately.

He threw a weak pass that hit Red Bryant between the numbers. The 323-pound defensive end lumbered into the end zone untouched for a 21-14 Seattle advantage.

At that point, the way the offense was stumbling around, the 7-point lead might as well have been 70 points.

It seemed as if it was after Brandon Browner's 42-yard interception return for a TD completed the scoring late in the fourth quarter.

For the third straight game, the Bears failed to score more than 14 points, even though the defense contributed a touchdown, something the Bears' offense has managed just twice in the last three games.

The Bears' offense got its only touchdown in the second quarter, when a scrambling Hanie found Bell wide open near the goal line for a 25-yard score. It was the first TD of Bell's three-year NFL career.

But that lone success was long forgotten in the Bears' solemn postgame locker room.

“The feeling in the locker room is not good,” Hanie said. “All the guys in there want to win games. I'm at the top of that list. I want to win games, and I haven't gotten it done.”

ŸFollow Bob's Bears reports via Twitter @BobLeGere and check out our Bear Essentials blog at dailyherald.com.

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