Thanks to a wedding and some unforgiving post-Hurricane Ike weather, this intrepid blogger was unable to catch much football yesterday. By itself, that would be OK; the NFL will be there for me in Week 3, when I will be watching from the confines of a Las Vegas sportsbook. (Equally likely is that I’ll be broke.) But the timing of the trip and the flooding on the South Side of Chicago meant I missed the entirety of the Bears Week 2 bid for football immortality.

It sounds like I didn’t miss much.

Never mind that the game had the aesthetic value of an emu eating a Brillo pad — no doubt with the same morning-after result. Forget the lunatic play-call on third-and-one, the dumb penalties and the mindless fumbles. The shocking realization for the Bears after their 20-17 loss to the Carolina Panthers on Sunday is that this franchise defies the odds like no other. For years, teams that block a punt and score a touchdown off it have been as likely to win an NFL game as those performing any other feat on the field. And yet it’s somehow not enough for the Bears?

Apparently not. But what about Kyle Orton? How did he play?

Part of developing a quarterback involves enduring games like the one Orton played Sunday. Orton’s decision-making, however, might concern coaches. He threw two passes that Panthers defensive backs could have intercepted and made a critical misread on third-and-1 in the final series that generated most of the postgame attention. Orton changed a run call to a pass, and his subsequent incompletion nearly resulted in an interception.

“I probably should have handed the ball off in that situation,” Orton said. “I probably tried to force the issue a little bit much.”

Wait, wait — we’re letting Kyle Orton audible on third-and-1? WHAT THE EFF IS GOING ON HERE?! Someone please explain this to me:

The situation screamed for a run play. What happened to getting off the bus running? “I should have just called a certain [run play], run it up there and get the first down,” Turner said.

Asked if he was surprised at the call, coach Lovie Smith said, “Yes, and surprised it didn’t work.” Note the honesty and then the almost immediate support of his players. That’s dexterity. But there was still hope, wasn’t there? It was fourth-and-1. The Bears had Forte, who already had rushed for 92 yards on 23 carries. The week before in his NFL debut, he had run for 123 yards. What, the Bears worry?

So.

Ron Turner is the offensive coordinator. He apparently trusts Kyle Orton — to whom I mean no offense, of course — to decide whether or not to run or throw the ball on third-and-1. This trust seems misplaced. And Orton’s decision, after receiving the misplaced, tenuous trust of his coach, is to see a whole bunch of large men in white-and-teal uniforms, freak out a little bit, and decide that instead of handing the ball to decisive, strong, rookie running back Matt Forte, he’s going to throw the ball to the slowing, old, bring-back-the-good-old-Bears-days Marty Booker.

For what it’s worth, Lovie is surprised this didn’t work out.

I hope everyone whose home was negatively affected this weekend will forgive me, but I’ve never been more genuinely thankful for highway-obstructing floods. Absent them, I might have had to watch this nonsense.