Frustration growing for 3-8 Bears, but players call it natural

As if being 3-8 weren’t maddening enough, it took about eight hours for the Bears to get from Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday back home to their beds. The culprit: a computer issue that grounded their plane for almost three hours at the airport.

Defensive end Mitch Unrein watched film of the Bears’ 31-3 loss on the plane.

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“Yeah, it’s tough, but that’s what we signed up for,” he said. “There’s going to be good and bad times. But hopefully the good times outweigh the bad times.”

They haven’t lately. On Monday at Halas Hall, players were heard arguing near the media center around the time of the team meeting.

Annoyance with losing is natural, running back Benny Cunningham said.

“You can feel the frustration within the team, but I feel like that’s natural as a competitor,” he said while saying he had no knowledge of the loud argument. “When you’re in a business that boils down to wins and losses at the end of the year, and you don’t get the wins you want or you lose tight games, whatever it is, just naturally being a competitor, it’s going to hurt.

“And then eventually you’re going to get frustrated if you care about it. You’re going to get sad and you’re going to be emotional because you put so much into this game.”

Sometimes, he said, arguments are about taking responsibility for how one plays.

“The performance we had [Sunday], no one should feel like they’re not a part of that,” he said. “I don’t care what you have to do. If you’re part of the organization, you should feel like you took a tough game Sunday.”

On the field-goal attempt

Coach John Fox defended his decision to try a field goal rather than go for it on fourth-and-four from the Eagles’ 36 in the first quarter. Cairo Santos missed a 54-yarder.

“We were within our range that we chart before games,” Fox said. “I thought we were with the wind. We didn’t execute like we wanted to. . . . Sure, an option would have been to go for it. But you don’t succeed there, you don’t get points.”

This and that

Trailing by 24 mandated the Bears play Daniel Brown, their superior pass-catching tight end, more than rookie Adam Shaheen, Fox said. Brown had 30 snaps, Shaheen 17.

• The Bears cut practice-squad wide receiver Mario Alford and signed Alex Carter, the Lions’ third-round pick in 2015. Carter, a cornerback whom the Lions converted to safety, has since spent time on the practice squads of the Patriots and Seahawks.

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Email: pfinley@suntimes.com