The Chicago Bears are in not such a hot place right now.

It’s not exactly a secret.

It’s like the old Mitch Hedberg joke: "The Bears used to suck. They still do, but they used to, too."

So, besides a 5-7 record, petulant team leaders, a lame duck coach and a banana republic front office, is anything else wrong?

The field is bad. Seriously, what is the deal here? Instead of owning their own stadium like a grown-up NFL team, the Bears lease it from the parks district of Chicago, which apparently means…their field needs to suck? I’m not sure why that is. It’s typical of the cause-and-effect snafus that haunt this "storied" franchise.

The coach is overwhelmed. He just is. The guy should be walking me through a cellular plan somewhere, not running an NFL team. I’m surprised they even let him anywhere near a chalkboard up at Halas Hall. Terry Boers from the Boers and Bernstein show on 670 AM The Score in Chicago calls Trestman "Dr. Death." It's a great story, coming over from the CFL to finally get his chance in the NFL, well maybe not "great" per se, but interesting. Mildly, lamely, boringly interesting.

The "young core" is overrated. This isn’t a huge issue. Kyle Fuller looks like a player (who kinda gets beat a lot), and so does Kyle Long (not as much!). But I feel like there are Fullers and Longs languishing across the NFL on bad, middling teams. Who else you got? Marquis Wilson has potential, but so do dozens of NCAA receivers every season. Ego Ferguson is a cool name, and by consensus does not suck, which apparently makes him quite the asset in Chicago. Alshon Jeffery can catch the ball in traffic better than any WR I’ve seen in the league this year—and he got Josh McCown paid—but you just signed Brandon Marshall to do the same thing.

Ted Phillips is not accountable. He is like the peddler from Caps for Sale: A Tale of a Peddler, Some Monkeys and Their Monkey Business (stick with me unless you’ve never read the story, in which case go read it and then come back). He is a bean-counter in charge of an out-of-control front office. And while Bears Nation would love to see a member of the McCaskey family in front of a microphone to explain what exactly the plan is, it’s never going to happen. Much like Insterstellar travelers, The McCaskeys do not exist in the same time or dimension as their fanbase, and communicate solely by tapping out their messages onto Ted Phillips’s head. As long as he keeps the bucks rolling in, Bears fans can keep pounding sand.

This will take years to rebuild. The Bears are not at rock bottom. Not even close. For many reasons, this was supposed to be their championship window. The dirty secret about this team is that it’s a sham. A paper tiger. When you compose a roster full of free-agent castaways, the whole is going to be less than the sum of its parts. Especially when those locker-room leaders consist of names like Jay Cutler, Brandon Marshall, Martellus Bennett, Lamarr Houston, DJ Williams, Santonio Holmes, Jeremiah Ratliff. Do any of those names jump off the page to you as personalities you’d want to build your team around?

But what about Matt Forte? Dude is a pro! And deadly quiet. He’s a running back, not a fullback, and he’ll only fill a leadership hole if other people have ran through first.

Win now was the philosophy in 2014. There was no "show signs of progress" plan this year (needless to say, they have NOT showed signs of progress). Phil Emery’s been a free-agent signing machine since he got here. Draft-and-develop, he has not. The cupboard is bare in Chicago, and it’s going to take several trips to the draft to stock it again. We’re talking five years of head-down, fundamentally focused drafting for a guy in Phil Emery who flinches at every Shea McLellin sparkling in the rough.

Sure, they canned Holmes. And they’ll probably ax DC Mel Tucker at the end of the season. These are band-aid moves. The problems on this roster run much deeper down to the DNA of the organization. Unless it’s a robot!

Speaking of robots. I’ll be programmed to CBS tonight to watch Thursday Night Football. Like Nascar and Boxing, I’m watching the remainder of the Bears games for the crashes and the knockouts. Maybe DeMarco Murray will run for 250 yards. Maybe Jay Cutler will throw 6 interceptions (Lord knows I’ve seen Favre do it!) Maybe Marc Trestman will get fired at half-time. Maybe the Bears will win 45-0.

Only one thing is for sure:

The Bears still suck.