Future salary-cap space, draft picks of no help to Bears in 41-10 loss to Lions

DETROIT — It’s hard to discern anything the Bears are accomplishing aside from quarterback Justin Fields making strides in what otherwise has been nearly a total loss of a season.

Beyond Fields, their great hope is a war chest of future salary-cap space — still just numbers on a spreadsheet at this point. None of that cap space helped Sunday as the Bears got thumped 41-10 by the Lions at Ford Field.

Don’t brush off that embarrassment. This season capsized a long time ago, but the fact that the Lions are further ahead of the Bears in their dueling rebuilds creates one more hurdle for an organization staring at an endless string of them.

Other than Fields, the season has been unwatchable. If they fall next week to the Vikings, they’ll finish with their second-worst record ever.

Take that in for a moment. The Bears have been around more than a century and have had some dreadful seasons, but this could be uglier than almost all of them.

And going 3-14 would be fine if it proves to be a step toward building a champion. But what if it’s just another empty Bears season like so many others? An entire season — five months of mostly meaningless games — is a lot to throw away.

Fields has grown into the franchise’s foundational piece, but this season has shown the limit of how far he can take the team without any blocking, receiving playmakers or defense.

It starts up front, and Fields has been sacked an NFL-high 55 times, including seven by the Lions on his 28 dropbacks.

“They showed a little bit different front, but nothing crazy,” left tackle Braxton Jones said. “We’ve just gotta do better.”

Fields, putting it diplomatically, said of the Lions’ pass rush, “They got back there pretty fast.”

The Bears aren’t going to stick with this roster, of course.

Almost everyone playing Sunday was a placeholder for whoever general manager Ryan Poles gets with his league-high cap space ($122.2 million) and full slate of draft picks. The Bears also will get wide receiver Darnell Mooney, safety Eddie Jackson and cornerback Jaylon Johnson back after season-ending injuries.

But nothing is guaranteed. Rebuilds have been misguided, money misspent and prospects misevaluated.

Filling out this starting lineup is challenging even with a wealth of resources, and as a first-time general manager, Poles never has done it. It takes great faith to sit through loss after loss assuming the Bears will get everything right this offseason.

What if the upgrades end up being modest rather than momentous?

It’d be easier to bet on the Bears’ future if they’d found more answers this season. That was supposed to be part of the process, not merely clearing out Ryan Pace’s bad contracts. Anyone could’ve burned the roster to the ground. Building is the hard part.

There aren’t a ton of developmental success stories to celebrate, though. Second-round picks Kyler Gordon and Jaquan Brisker were supposed to be good and they are. Mooney, Johnson and Jackson were good before the new staff arrived.

It’s impressive that Jones won the left tackle job as a fifth-round pick, but he hasn’t cemented that spot for next season. Undrafted rookie Jack Sanborn was solid, but the team has made clear it doesn’t view middle linebacker as a premium position. Many of the surprise starters wouldn’t be starters on a contender, so those boxes remain unchecked.

Wide receiver Chase Claypool was the Bears’ splashiest addition, but he barely has dipped his toe in the water. He returned from a knee injury Sunday and got his lone target with 1:58 left. He has an unconvincing 12 catches for 111 yards in six games.

The Bears have some runway because an enormous cleanup was required, but they’re just about at the end of it. This time next season, they need to be miles ahead of how they looked Sunday.