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I don't mean to get all John McCain on you and promise that I won't be driving a bus around Chicagoland but there's a desperate need for some straight talk from the city's football team. The only consistent thing about the team this season has been the misdirection and obfuscation practiced by the coaching staff. From sniping about credit for the winning drive against Philadelphia to the mishandled switch to Rex Grossman to Brian Urlacher's injury, the team has failed to handle their business in a truthful and straightforward manner.

So it wasn't surprising to read in today's Chicago Sun-Times that Lovie Smith is again acting like an ostrich. This time he's choosing to ignore the obvious when it comes to the physical condition of Tommie Harris. Harris dominated last year's game against the Seahawks but made just one tackle on Sunday. Yesterday, a report indicated he needed postseason knee surgery but Smith scoffed at such a notion.

"We need to all play better, but as far as him being injured or any of that, that's not the case.''

Harris has missed one game and barely practices so there must be some injury. He nodded when asked about the surgery and the Bears dressed Antonio Garay as a backup for Harris on Sunday. Why would they do that if Harris wasn't hurt?

It's not like Harris needs to use the injury as an excuse for bad play. He's got seven sacks, tied for the team lead, and has done everything he's physically capable of doing this season. But you need only watch one Bears defensive series to see that all the pistons aren't firing at the highest levels. By saying he isn't fighting through injury as best he can Smith is saying that a poor game, like Sunday's, is just a result of Harris playing badly. There's so much evidence to the contrary that only a fool would believe Smith.

Just like it would take a fool to believe his reasoning for not running Cedric Benson more on Sunday.

'I've been asked a lot about the number of carries he got. Looking at it on a Monday after the game, when a guy averages over eight yards a carry, I can see why you would ask why we didn't get him the ball more. But we moved the ball fairly well throughout. Whether you're moving the ball with the run or the pass, it doesn't really matter once you get in a game as long as you get some production, and we were able to do that. I like what we did offensively.''

While it is true that the Bears moved the ball on offense, Benson had almost a fifth of the Bears entire production on his first two carries. Smith said he was looking for more from the running game last week, got it and then ignored it in favor of a preconceived plan to get other guys more touches. I understand that he might not want to throw Ron Turner under the bus to the media but you don't really get the feeling things are different behind closed doors.

The Bears aren't going anywhere this season, not unless they win out anyway. A good thing for them to work on for next season is ironing out the kinks in their communications so that they don't look like a team that has no idea what's going on inside their own locker room. That and a