(670 The Score) The Bears are expected to blow a game. This ruins an entire and once promising season. What can’t happen is the real-time destruction of the best quarterback prospect in franchise history.

The Bears have unconscionably waited too long to fire an incompetent head coach who should never have lasted as long as he did, sleeping at the helm of a team that once thought it was going to be good, as hilarious as that seems now after their eighth loss in a row. They’ve squandered the chance to save a season and now realize they’re in danger of ruining something much more valuable.

The barely-interested Vikings pulled off a sleepwalking 30-12 win in Minneapolis on Monday night, making certain dead ends for the Bears’ interim coaching staff and raising alarm bells about Caleb Williams and what’s left of his rookie development curve: his confidence, his physical condition, his trust in his teammates and his belief that he is in the right place professionally.

Williams looks unsettled and miserable, alternately too fast and too slow, escaping full-blown pass rushes only to spot the chaotic bundles of bodies downfield at the last second. There is no plan, no comfort, no help.

His guard, in name only, is a collection of tall, slow men who fall too often. And even some of his good passes result in rock-hard drops.

It’s all a conspiracy to make him worse, and that’s what’s really scary.

Williams misses wide-open receivers, holds onto the ball too long, and simply doesn’t feel the rhythm of the NFL offense, having it haphazardly built into his body and mind by a clown car of overpaid idiots and arbitrary promotions. Receivers are just as busy Polishing resumes for other teams while completing their current tasks.

Meanwhile, Williams fights through indescribable existential pain and uncertainty to remain both upright and optimistic, proudly carrying his own flag even though so few around him can do so for and with him.

Williams now stares down the Bears’ history and even more so with every snap remaining in this horror show. Even if you think this is too harsh, admit that it is at least a kind of old moral fable, a vivid example of what we mean when we talk about the bears.

I hate this. I hate that fatalism wins. I hate the stupid weight of the stupid story.

Ryan Poles and Kevin Warren told us that the past no longer matters until they need sepia-toned nostalgia to warm what’s left in the hearts of dying old fans and enough moneyed political interests. Then of course it does.

This is the present, right in front of us, and the Chicago Bears are already in the process of derailing it.

Dan Bernstein is co-host of The Bernstein & Harris Show at noon from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on 670 The Score. You can follow him on X @Dan_Bernstein.