So much for rallying the troops in the face of adversity.

The Bears went to the desert and literally rained on their comeback parade from the Hail Mary pass as the Cardinals dominated them from midway through the second quarter on Sunday in a 29-9 rout.

It was the kind of loss to leave legitimate questions about the team, the coaching staff and even GM Ryan Poles’ role in it all. The Cardinals (5-4), like the Chiefs last week, are a team to fire coaches and start rebuilding long after the Bears have started theirs, but they are better teams.

“We’ve got to try the wagons, we’ve got to do a really good job of staying tight,” coach Matt Eberflus said. “That’s what you do in times of adversity.”

It’s adverse, all right. Instead of all the heat on Tyrique Stevenson for a Hail Mary at the end of the game, the entire team will absorb the heat now that he went down.

It all started coming down shortly after the rain with some hail fell in the Phoenix area, a real oddity. Without the roof up, it even threatened to affect a Bears field goal attempt. That was unfortunate, considering they never got anywhere near the Arizona 11-yard line to attempt anything more than a field goal.

Soon after, the Bears were watching the Cardinals’ running game cut through their defense. James Conner ran for 107 yards on 18 carries, Emari Demercado ran for 59 yards and Trey Benson for 37 as the Cardinals rolled for 213 yards on the ground. They needed only 155 yards from Kyler Murray to win.

The crushing blow came before halftime after Cairo Santos followed field goals of 53 and 29 yards with another 53 yards to cut the deficit to 14-9. With 26 seconds left on the kickoff, the Cardinals moved it 17 yards and with 12 seconds left in the half, Eberflus called for a blitz. Demercado rambled a handoff from the right side to 53 yards.

“Good game by them,” safety Kevin Byard told reporters. “Obviously they got us on a blitz or whatever. He was able to get through the line untouched or whatever. It was bad luck.”

Eberflus did not see the bad luck involved.

“The score at the end of the half, for me, that’s on me,” Eberflus said. “We called a pass defense, a pass pressure and they ended up running the ball. I can make a better call there.

“That’s on me. I think our defense needs to step up.”

It was like a tire blowout.

“At the end of the half, you don’t want to give that up,” linebacker TJ Edwards told reporters.

They did it at the end of the previous week’s game, this time at the end of the inning.

From their 21-9 halftime deficit, the Bears went right down, and the offense didn’t get past the Cardinals 40 in the second half.

Arizona’s offense, which scored on Trey McBride’s 2-yard run and Trey Benson’s 1-yard run in the first half, simply bullied the Bears defense the entire second half. Chad Ryland added field goals of 29 and 55 yards and then a safety on a cut block in the end zone after the game got out of hand.

Williams struggled to a 22-of-41 effort for 217 yards and was sacked six times. He took a hit late in the game and again in the final game and limped off the field.

Why they played their franchise quarterback in the final series of a 29-9 game, absorbing the blows with right tackle Darnell Wright leaving the game with a knee injury and left tackle Braxton Jones missing the entire game seems questionable at best .

“We just go to work and get and get time and timing in the two-minute operation,” Eberflus said.

Williams limped off with an ankle injury but said he’ll be fine.

“It’s not my decision,” Williams said. “You fight until the end of the game if you’re in the game. If you’re not, the coach makes that decision, you have to deal with it and figure out the next steps.”

The Bears are now 3-18 under Eberflus in road games, 4-17 if you want to give them credit for a win in London when they were officially the home team.

They will return home for a game against New England best labeled as the biggest of the year, not because it could prevent a three-game skid, but because losing one to a bad team at home, one more to rebuild from Eberflus became a coach, will invite a lot of requests for a dismissal during the season.

The only positive was that no one cared about the whole Stevenson situation until the end of it. He didn’t start as a Hail Mary pass penalty from the previous week, but had to play because his replacement, Terell Smith, injured his ankle and joined Andrew Billings (pectoral muscle), Darnell Wright (knee) and Jaylon Jones ( shoulder). leaving the game with injuries.

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