Imrem: Chicago Bears always pass on throwing the ball

The Seahawks' 26-0 victory over the Bears was in the first half Sunday.

I started daydreaming that I just awoke from a coma after 40 years and looked up at a TV in a hospital room.

"What year is this?" I asked a nurse.

"2015," she said.

"Then why does it look like it's still 1975?" I said.

"Because they're still the Bears," she said.

In other words, they still can't pass the ball.

Other than a blip of a season here or there, the Bears haven't been able to pass the ball like passing teams pass the ball.

The rules have turned the NFL into an aerial circus. Yet the Bears remain a bunch of - no, not dancing Bears - running bears.

There's always a reason. Sunday it was because starting quarterback Jay Cutler and wide receiver Alshon Jeffery were absent with injuries.

So even in their first season with the Bears, head coach John Fox and offensive coordinator Adam Gase did at Seattle what's instinctive for anyone associated with this franchise.

They ran away from the pass and we line-plunged into another self-induced coma.

Remember, this is the franchise that used to throw deep on third-and-long because "an interception is as good as a punt."

Times have changed at least a little in that respect. Sunday on third-and-25, before punting the Bears ran into the middle of the line for a short gain.

Occasionally the Bears have tried to employ head coaches and offensive coordinators with a passing pedigree, guys like Sid Gillman, Mike Martz and Marc Trestman.

But the Bears' offense always winds up being what it was Sunday: a tight fist instead of a starburst palm.

Maybe Seattle would have won 80-0 if the Bears let substitute quarterback Jimmy Clausen come out throwing.

We'll never know, though, because the Bears started out with three tight ends. They handed the ball off to Matt Forte 15 times in the first half. They controlled the clock.

And they still trailed 6-0 at halftime.

It looked so much like the 1970s when the Vikings would toy with the Bears until moseying past them and moving on to bigger challenges.

Wasn't this supposed to change when the Bears traded for gunslinger Jay Cutler in 2009?

Well, even if Cutler were a better quarterback, he wouldn't have reached his supposed potential here any more than Joe Montana or Brett Favre would have.

How often have we heard that Halas Hall is where quarterbacks, wide receivers and offensive coordinators go to die, and how often has that sentiment been confirmed?

If the Bears would have hired Bill Walsh as head coach, his West Coast offense would have wound up in a brown paper bag on the side of the road somewhere around North Platte, Nebraska.

As Fox and Gase are discovering, it just isn't in this franchise's DNA to emphasize the pass over the run.

There just hasn't been a hungry man's appetite for the forward pass here during the past half-century.

The best that Bears fans can hope for is offensive balance because the preference always seems to be to throw zero passes in any given game.

There's every reason to believe that the Bears will play the Seahawks in 40 years and still be looking for a passing game.

"What year is it?" I will ask as I emerge from a coma.

"2055," a nurse will say.

"Then why," I'll wonder, "do the Bears look like it's 1975 and 2015 and …?"

Because they're the Bears, she'll say, that's why.

mimrem@dailyherald.com