Imrem: Bad things come to Bears coaches who wait

One more thing should be said about Bears coach Marc Trestman challenging the offense at halftime of the Buccaneers game.

What took so long?

If Trestman had exercised tough love sooner than later, maybe the Bears wouldn't be teetering on the brink of extinction at Detroit on Thanksgiving Day.

All the Bears had to do was win one more game to this point to be in the middle of the playoff race instead of on the margins.

The Bears would be 6-5 instead of 5-6 with no unbeatable teams on the remaining schedule.

As it is, to have a chance at the playoffs the Bears have to win all of their games to end the season with a seven-game winning streak and 10-6 record.

Where should that additional victory have come? How about if the Bears had split games against Buffalo and Miami instead of going 0-2.

The Bears couldn't be expected to beat the Patriots or Packers on the road because those teams clearly are better.

However, talent-wise the Bears are in a cluster with the likes of the Bills and Dolphins, so beating one of them in Soldier Field should have been taken for granted.

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe the Bears took those games for granted and are paying dearly for the mistake today.

Buffalo was the season opener and we'll give the Bears a pass on that one because odd things happen in season openers.

The one that's haunting is Game 7 at home against the Dolphins on Oct. 19, when Trestman should have had the Bears in midseason form.

The Bears were in the middle of stumbling five times in six games and Miami was a team that they coulda, shoulda, woulda beat if properly prepared and appropriately motivated.

The following applied to baseball the first time I heard it: One measure of a manager is how quickly he can shake his team out of a slump.

The same can be said of an NFL head coach: How quickly does his team emerge from a period of losing?

Trestman flunked the test miserably when the Bears kept sliding into a 3-6 record, a funk that included an ugly loss at Carolina.

Transparent was that only recently did Trestman begin inspiring the Bears to play up to their talent level against lesser teams, to say nothing of getting them to play above their talent level against better teams.

If Trestman did indeed challenge the Bears during Sunday's intermission, it sure looks like it was a case of too little too late to salvage the season.

Think of some of the teams with some of the NFL's better records: New England, Green Bay and Pittsburgh.

All three struggled early in the season until their coaches made adjustments that guided them onto a more successful path.

We should mention that Bill Belichick, Mike McCarthy and Mike Tomlin have an asset that Trestman doesn't.

Each has won at least one championship and still has the quarterback who played for him in the Super Bowl.

When Green Bay looked vulnerable, Aaron Rodgers made his famous “R-E-L-A-X” crack, the Packers proceeded to beat the Bears that weekend, and the teams went in opposite directions from there to here.

So the failure to steady the Bears when they needed steadying isn't all Trestman's fault. Phil Emery is a co-conspirator.

The Bears' general manager stuck Trestman with Jay Cutler. The coach-quarterback combination simply wasn't good enough to record that additional victory that would have the Bears in a better place heading toward December.

Only finishing the schedule with 5 more victories will save Trestman-Cutler-Emery and the Bears from the criticism they earned the first half of the season.

Good luck with that, fellas.