Smith gets to the point on Bears' strong suit

Watching film of the Bears' defensive effort from Thursday night's 37-30 preseason loss to the San Francisco 49ers did nothing to improve coach Lovie Smith's mood or change his opinion of what is supposed to be the team's strong suit.

"Defensively, after we looked at it in detail, we have a lot of improvement to make," Smith said. "We're better than that. It's as simple as that. There's no need for panic or anything like that, but that's not acceptable, and we'll play better defense in the future."

One problem is that the Bears will have precious little game action to make the improvements, since the starters will only make token appearances in the preseason finale Thursday in Cleveland.

"It's what we can do in practice," Smith said. "We haven't decided exactly how much we're going to play our guys in this (last) game. We're going to do whatever we need to do to get ready for the Colts, so that may be a little bit more (at practice) than what we normally do."

Having allowed 37 points and 425 total yards to a 49ers offense that was the NFL's worst last season, the Bears are rightfully concerned about what could happen in the regular-season opener against the Indianapolis Colts, who were No. 3 in scoring last season and No. 5 in total yards.

Smith said this week's practices would more closely resemble those from training camp. Even though missed tackles were a major problem against the 49ers, Smith said his team would not resort to live tackling in practice.

"I don't think you need to," he said. "We haven't ever (done that), and we don't plan on doing that right now. That's not the answer. We made some mistakes (Thursday) night. I wouldn't say that it was all tackling."

Well, what else was it? Problems within the scheme? Missed assignments?

"All of the above really," Smith said. "We had some missed tackles; we made mistakes. We didn't play as hard as we need to from time to time. We got in position to make some plays, and we didn't."

Some defensive players didn't seem overly concerned, pointing out that it's still the preseason.

"A lot of us are trying to pace ourselves, and that's myself too," said 25-year-old defensive tackle Tommie Harris. "It's difficult the older you get to go out in a game and know that none of this stuff matters. But you still have to play full speed, you still have to go hard. Now it's up to us. I think we need to turn up the pace a little more, change our attitude a little more. But I'm not going to panic. I think our guys are capable of doing a great job."

The Bears have already allowed 90 points in losing their first three preseason games, and veteran safety Mike Brown said the defense can't hide behind the excuse that the preseason doesn't count.

"That's a horrible excuse," Brown said. "There was a lot at stake out there (Thursday). We wanted to come out and show what type of defense we're going to be for the season. If we play like that, obviously we're going to be a pretty bad defense. It's going to be a replay of how we were last year - 28th, 29th, 30th in the league."

The Bears were actually 28th in total yards allowed last season and 16th in points allowed, finishing with a 7-9 record. In 2006, the Bears finished fifth in yards and third in points allowed en route to Super Bowl XLI.

Defensive players have talked frequently about duplicating their accomplishments from 2006, but so far that's all it has been - talk.

"We talk about it, but talking about it and doing it are two different things," Brown said. "We wanted to come out and show the people that we can be a dominant defense. Everyone just has to look in the mirror, see what type of player they want to be, see what type of defense we want to be, and go from there. Because if we play like we did (Thursday) night, we're not going to win many football games."