Bears tiptoe around penalty issue their fans find infuriating

"It's frustrating. Obviously, you go back and watch it, and some of them you feel a certain way about it or whatever the case may be. In the moment, the call is the call. You have to move on from it. You’ve got to find ways to move on and find ways to go win games, which is what we did.”

The Bears should be used to this kind of flag disparity. At first it was because of silly presnap penalties but now it seems to be shifting to controversial non-calls or created calls like the illegal formation on Theo Benedet or the offensive pass interference Colston Loveland.

They have averaged 8.6 penalties per game, the third most in the league. The 72.4 yards in penalties per game are also the third most.

It's easier to accept a flag count so high if opponents are treated similarly. They're not.

Bears opponents are being flagged only at a rate of 5.0 per game, the second fewest for any team's opponents. Bears opponents receive an average of 35.8 yards a game in flags, the second fewest average yards.

Penalties were a topic looked at prior to the Washington game in the self-scout, according to offensive coordinator Declan Doyle.

"Every penalty's different," Doyle said. "We had three (strange ones) in the game that we just played. You can look at it and say whatever you want, whether you agree or not. It really doesn't matter, when they throw the flag, it's a penalty.

"The biggest thing is figuring out how we teach those things moving forward to avoid those. Every situation is different, whether you're talking about a pass interference, or we're lined up offsides or something like that. It really specific is to the individual play, whatever that infraction was. We're still working to clean that up in pre-snap.”

In some cases, there was nothing to clean up.

This is the problem. Someone else needs to clean it up. They wear stripes.