Bears lack that key ingredient: talent

Tommie Harris says the Bears haven't been hungry nough, and Lovie Smith says they lacked heart last week against the Vikings.

How about this? How about that being more excuse than reason for a 2-4 record? How about the Bears just haven't been good enough?

Like, I can be as hungry as I want for Scarlett Johansson and still not get within a stalker's restraining order of her.

Looks and money would help more than hunger, just as brawn and brains do in the NFL.

(Unless, of course, you're talking about a team like the Bears that won't let their defensive tackles eat enough pizza to become 350-pound run stoppers.)

The lack of hunger is mere sportspeak for not being good enough, something a team or player never wants to concede out loud.

That's why they're so inventive when it comes to explaining failure. The guy on the other side has to be something other than better. He has to be hungrier, or you have to be out of heart.

That gets us back to the Bears putting themselves in a predicament where their playoff aspirations are in the balance today in Philadelphia.

Trust me, the outcome won't be determined by whether Donovan McNabb or Brian Urlacher has been fortified more by his mother's chunky soup.

If the Bears win, it'll be because they're good enough. If they don't, it'll be because the Eagles are better.

All those excuses uttered around Halas Hall amounted to insults of Minnesota, suggesting the Vikings won only because the Bears weren't hungry or hearty enough to beat them.

The Vikes won because they blocked better and tackled better. The Bears couldn't get to the right place at the right time because the Vikings wouldn't let them.

It wasn't because the Bears weren't hungry enough to get there or didn't have the heart to get there or didn't focus on anything but the buxom blonde in the first row.

Seriously, the Bears haven't been floundering because they lost their appetite. They lost their appetite because they have been floundering.

These aren't the same Bears who made it to the Super Bowl last season. The players, coaching staff and chemistry are different, not necessarily for the better.

The Bears have a different running back and quarterback. One starting defensive tackle is different and the other isn't the same yet after last season's surgery. Defensive backs move from position to position, winding up out of position.

As much as it's poor form to blame injuries, the truth is the Bears have been banged up. Some lost time to injury. Others played, but poorly because they were hurt.

Yeah, sure, all teams suffer injuries and all players endure soreness. But some teams suffer more injuries, some players are sorer than others and sometimes the degree of the ache is the difference between winning and losing.

The Bears' only hope of converting a sloppy start into a fast finish isn't based on getting hungry. It's based on getting healthy and by extension better.

The process has to begin today because if Urlacher is correct, the Bears need 10 victories to make the playoffs.

A 2-5 start would be fatal because even healthy, the Bears aren't good enough to win eight of their final nine games.

Chomp on that food for thought awhile, fellas.