In short, no answers

SEATTLE -- Matt Hasselbeck isn't Joe Montana, but the Bears made him look like he was Sunday.

The Seahawks quarterback was too nimble of foot, too accurate of arm and too cerebral of mind for them.

Hasselbeck said of his battle of wits with Bears middle linebacker Brian Urlacher, "Whoever gets the last (playcalling) check in is usually the most successful."

Check these statistics for Hasselbeck and determine who succeeded: 30 completions in 44 pass attempts, 337 yards, 2 touchdowns, zero interceptions and a 106.0 quarterback rating.

That's right, Hasselbeck beat Urlacher and the Seahawks beat the Bears 30-23.

"When you give up over 300 yards," Bears head coach Lovie Smith said, "you don't like that."

Yet his team was defenseless to do anything about it, and against an offense that hadn't been able to run the ball in recent weeks.

Seattle coach Mike Holmgren said of his offense increasingly relying on the pass, "I don't want to make too much of this because we are going to continue to do what we think we have to do to move the ball.

"Much of that depends on Matt's decisions. The Bears gave us some problems. We had some adjustments we had to make at halftime in our protections. Matt got banged up a little bit, but he had a very fine football game."

Seattle did rush for 103 yards, led by Maurice Morris' 87. But the pass set up the run rather than vice versa.

The Bears simply couldn't do anything about Hasselbeck. He did everything Rex Grossman is supposed to but normally doesn't.

Hasselbeck demonstrated an ability to move in, around and out of the pocket. In the process he showed the ability to make plays when they aren't there.

That said, Grossman played well against Seattle, throwing for 266 yards. Hasselbeck just played better.

"He's a good quarterback, a great quarterback," Bears cornerback Charles Tillman conceded about Hasselbeck. "He's able to scramble, with a little shake and bake about him. That's Hasselbeck, what makes him good."

The beneficiaries were a variety of Seattle receivers -- D.J. Hackett with 9 receptions, ex-Bear Bobby Engram with 8, Deion Branch and Leonard Weaver with 4 apiece, and so on and so forth.

Overall the Seahawks' offense did so many more things than the Bears' defense allowed them to do last year, when the Bears beat Seattle once in the regular season and again in the playoffs.

"(The Bears) are well coached, they know what they're doing, and they have a system that works," Hasselbeck graciously said.

"I thought (the Bears) did a really nice job, Urlacher and those guys, of disguising things. He got me sometimes. I think we got them sometimes. We can do a lot of things better."

If that's the case, the Bears better hope they don't play the Seahawks again anytime soon.

As for Urlacher, he played his usual childish word games afterward.

On where the Bears go from here: "We have to play better." On the play of the Bears' defense: "Too many yards." On Grossman's performance: "He did well."

In other words, Urlacher didn't have any better answers off the field for the media than he had for Hasselbeck on it.