Resistible forces

 The Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts played a football game or something like it Sunday down in Lucas Oil Stadium, and when it was done it was hard to say which young quarterback you felt more sorry for.

Was it Anthony Richardson, who occasionally throws such atrociously off-target balls you wonder if he's aiming for Raymond Berry or John Mackey or some other ghost of Colts receivers past?

Or was it Caleb Williams, who occasionally plays like the rookie he wasn't supposed to be, and is also hampered by the fact the Bears have no offensive line, no running game and an offensive coordinator who dials up plays straight out of Millard Fillmore Middle School?

Hard to say after yesterday's display, which was not so much a display as a warning label: Do Not Use After Sell-By Date. Unfortunately, the sell-by date for Bears-Colts yesterday was, I don't know, Labor Day or something.

In the end the Colts won 21-16, their first W of the season, but they couldn't possibly have felt good about it. Richardson was again dazzling or at least serviceable on one snap, son-where-were-you-going-with-that-throw on the next. The defense stuffed the Bears run game and sacked Williams four times, but mostly because the Bears run game is so eminently stuff-able and Williams committed the usual rookie sin of holding onto the ball too long.

In the end, it was Jonathan Taylor who bailed out the Horsies, running for 110 yards and two scores. That was one less touchdown than the Bears would have had if Shane Waldron, the aforementioned OC, hadn't been calling the plays.

Against a defense that got paved by the Packers running game last week, Waldron chose to have Williams throw 52 times. He completed 33 of them for 353 yards and two touchdowns, but also threw two picks that were pure rookie: One when he threw late on an out pattern, the other when he went deep into double coverage on Rome Odunze.

Very little of the rest was on him. And that's especially true when the Bears had first-and-goal at the Colts 5 in the second quarter and got nothing for it.

Instead of letting Williams try to make a play, Waldron instead dialed up three inside running plays even though the Bears O-line wasn't getting any kind of push up front. Nonetheless, they got down to the one-foot line on the first two plays, and then ...

And then, instead of running a quarterback sneak with Williams, they ran almost the same play for the third straight time. Predictably, the O-line leaked and the Colts blew up the play at the 1.

And on fourth down?

Nah, let's not let Caleb make something happen. Let's go all middle school and run a dopey option play instead, because, you know, that always works in the NFL.

You know what happened next: The Colts were all over it from the snap, and the pitch to poor D'Andre Swift lost 11 yards.

That was the whole day wrapped up in a poorly-tied ribbon -- a day when one supremely resistible force met an even more supremely resistible force, and the less resistible force managed to avoid an 0-3 start.

Now they're both 1-2, and no one is very happy about it.

Which might also be said of anyone who skipped a house payment to buy tickets to Sunday's show. Sorry for your loss, enthusiasts.