Imrem: Who's to blame for that conversion try?

A week ago they were verging on genius status.

Chicago Bears head coach John Fox was a candidate for NFL coach of the year.

Offensive coordinator Adam Gase would have his choice of head-coaching jobs in the off-season.

Quarterback Jay Cutler was a new man, a new player, a new sensation.

Today … not so much.

The Bears botched so much Sunday afternoon while losing 17-15 to the Broncos that it's hard to figure out where to begin.

How about starting at the end? How about that 2-point conversion call? How about sealing a loss on that play?

Anticipation permeated Soldier Field with 24 seconds left in the fourth quarter and Denver clinging to that 2-point lead.

Would Cutler fake a handoff to Jeremy Langford and pop a pass over the defense? Would he roll out and give himself the option to run or pass? Would he stick the ball under his shirt, throw his palms in the air like he didn't know where it went and snake his way into the end zone to tie the game?

Surely Cutler wouldn't simply hand the ball off to Langford and ask him to plow across the goal line.

Actually, surely he would.

The result stands out on the stats sheet in capital letters: ATTEMPT FAILS.

Langford accepted the handoff, bulled into the mass of humanity at the line of scrimmage and went down in a heap.

"I have to do a better job of getting 2 yards," Langford said.

If ever there was a need for a more detailed explanation of what went wrong and why, this was it.

As usual, Fox refused to go deeper into the matter, saying, "I'm not going to get into schemes and what we are doing schematically, but obviously we came up short."

Yes, coach, obviously.

Fox's only expanded explanation went like this: "Sometimes we execute and sometimes we don't."

The general feeling is that just once it would be nice to come out of a John Fox briefing knowing more than when you went in.

"You guys always want to hear the blame game," Fox said.

Well, yes, of course we do.

This old Soviet-style secrecy is the way Fox prefers it, so the media is left to guess what went wrong and why.

Here's my guess: The 2-point play was dumb.

It was dumb regardless of whether Gase called a dumb play from the sideline or Cutler picked the dumbest of a few options at the line of scrimmage.

"If you pay attention to what we do," Fox condescended, "we have a lot of (options) in our offense in every down, not just 2-point plays."

That kind of sounds like - interpret as you choose - like Cutler selected the wrong option.

"I think Fox covered it," Cutler said. "We had options, but we just didn't execute as well as we wanted to and we didn't get the job done."

The ending was like a place-kicker missing a 20-yard field goal that would have tied the score with 24 seconds left.

Teammates scratched and clawed and sweat and bled for 59:36 and had to watch the game squandered away in the final :24.

There isn't time left to address the failed fourth-and-goal play when the Bears decided not to kick a field goal earlier in the fourth quarter.

"Anytime you don't get it done," Cutler said, "there is going to be second-guessing."

Especially when the Bears fail to beat a Broncos team that was waiting to be beaten.

Oh how the Bears' geniuses have fallen in the matter of a week.

mimrem@dailyherald.com