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Painful experience for Cutler, Bears

NEW ORLEANS — If you can't protect your quarterback in passing situations, you better be able to run the ball.

That's a lesson the Bears had better learn soon or they'll have many more games like the 30-13 butt-kicking they took Sunday from the Saints.

Like many of his teammates, Bears quarterback Jay Cutler was beaten and beaten up.

Cutler was sacked six times for 58 yards in losses. One of those, a blindside back-snapper by 278-pound Turk McBride, forced a fumble deep in Bears territory that led to a Saints touchdown.

Cutler was hurried on almost every other pass he attempted, forced to yell at the top of his lungs over the deafening din created by 73,019 onlookers and kicked in the throat early in the third quarter.

He appeared at his postgame news conference looking and sounding like something that had been dragged in from Bourbon Street.

“We'll find out tomorrow,” Cutler said when asked the obvious question: How do you feel? “I'm probably going to be pretty sore.”

The Saints blitzed everyone except defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, and too often the Bears were either overwhelmed by numbers or didn't make their blocks.

But, when you run the ball 12 times all day and just two times in the entire second half, it's easy for the opposing defense to send everyone but the Maytag repairman after the quarterback.

In the fourth quarter, the Bears didn't run the ball at all. Cutler was asked if the Bears need to run more to keep the blitzing wolves at bay.

“I don't know, you have to talk to (offensive coordinator) Mike (Martz) about that,” he said. “You get in a hole like we were, down two or three scores, you're going to have to throw the ball a little bit.

“I think we have to get Matt (Forte) going early on. We have to set the tone with him and get the ball to him because he's obviously one of our better players.”

On his second carry of the game, Forte busted loose for 42 yards. He had just 8 more carries for the rest of the game, finishing with 49 yards on 10 attempts, in addition to 117 more yards on 10 receptions.

Part of the reason Forte had so many receptions is because even when Cutler wasn't buried by the pass rush, he had to dump the ball off quickly to avoid another sack.

The offensive line is a long way from a finished product, and it was missing Lance Louis, the opening-day starter at right guard, who was out with a sprained ankle and replaced by Chris Spencer.

In the second quarter, right tackle Gabe Carimi suffered a knee injury and was replaced by Frank Omiyale. The earsplitting crowd noise didn't help.

“It's not near where we need to be,” center Roberto Garza said. “It's not acceptable. “We knew what they were going to do; we just have to get it done, and we didn't do that.

“It falls on the offensive line, and we have to do a better job. (Cutler) took some hard hits, and that falls on our shoulders.”

It would be a lot easier on Cutler and the offensive line if the run game were allowed to shoulder some of the load. After all, this O-line is supposed to be better at run blocking than pass protection.

So let the group play to its strength. We already know what its weakness is. And now so does the rest of the league.

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

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