Rozner: Lowered expectations a break for Bears

Jay Cutler is a football genius.

He's picked up the offense faster than any quarterback ever has in this Adam Gase system. He's completely comfortable. He's protecting the football. He's on the verge of having his best season as a professional.

Stop me if you've heard any of this before.

As the saying goes, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 37 times, I'm a moron and deserve exactly what I get."

OK, maybe not exactly that, but no one would blame you for feeling that way.

Hey, maybe Cutler will have a great season. It's possible. He's certainly due.

There's never been less pressure on him and expectations couldn't be lower if he were playing inside linebacker. The Bears' hope for Cutler at this point is precisely nothing.

So who knows? Maybe he won't be terrible and throw a little less to the opposition this year.

Whatever.

The Bears are in full rebuild and if Ryan Pace and John Fox didn't know it when they took over, they certainly figured it out during camp, letting everyone else in on it when they started cutting bad players while in search of something marginally better.

But that's encouraging news.

These guys may be a lot of things, some of them unpleasant, but at least internally they don't appear to be delusional as it applies to the talent level on this team.

Thus, the constant changes in the lineup and in personnel.

The Bears are coming off a 5-11 season and look very much like they're still a 5-11 team.

Cutler remains the quarterback and the Bears will rely on the run game to keep a bad defense off the field. They do have solid running back depth and they'll need it considering the beating Matt Forte has taken the last few years.

But the first-team offense struggled to run block in the preseason, and as of the last practice they had a receiving corps no CFL team would be proud to take into a game.

The offensive line remains a mess-in-progress, though it appears the move of Kyle Long - the team's best player - to tackle is finally happening.

In any case, the offense will be all about Forte as the Bears hope to kill as much clock as possible and keep games from getting away from them.

Defensively, well, it can't possibly be as bad as the last few years, right?

But it might be.

The Bears have a terrific coordinator in Vic Fangio but little talent, and there's not enough genius on the sideline to bring the Bears back to respectability this season.

On the defensive line, the Bears have some young players like Eddie Goldman who look like keepers, but they're still learning and deserve a grace period.

At linebacker, there's plenty who can threaten the quarterback, but their inside linebackers can't cover anyone and that's a huge problem considering their secondary, which could be a disaster if Kyle Fuller doesn't take a big step forward and stay on the field in 2015.

Of course, it's not really about this season.

The Bears have a long way to go before they can think about competing again so this year is about developing as many young players as possible whenever and wherever they get the opportunity.

The best news is the Bears have a professional head coach and professional coordinators, something you couldn't say around these parts the last few seasons.

At some point, it will become apparent that the Bears are better coached, even if it doesn't show up every week on the scoreboard, and maybe at some point it will show up with more victories.

They look like a team capable of winning four or five games, but maybe with the benefit of professionals on staff they can win six or seven.

If that happens, it would be a huge accomplishment when you consider what happened last season and the genuine lack of talent on this roster.

Just know that with every game the Bears win, it hurts their spot in the draft next spring.

But at least that might give you a reason to watch.

brozner@dailyherald.com

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