Hub Arkush: Where does the Bears’ Halloween massacre leave them now?

LAKE FOREST — At least the Bears were true to Halloween in their 33-22 loss to the 49ers on Sunday.

There were treats, a handful of plays from rookie quarterback Justin Fields that only the great ones make.

But the treats were outweighed by the tricks.

Proving the offense got better Sunday requires either a magician of otherworldly skills or an imagination that stretches like silly putty.

Although the Bears managed 60 yards more total offense than their 264-yards-a-game average, easily the worst in the league, the 324 yards they put up Sunday was more than the average for the season of only six other clubs.

The 148 yards of net passing were 33 yards fewer than the season average of the 31st-ranked New Orleans Saints, leaving the Bears still dead last with a ridiculously embarrassing 127.4 yards a game.

And then there was the near total collapse of the defense with 22½ minutes to play, starting with an 84-yard screen pass on third-and-19.

So where does it leave these Bears now?

Do you back up the bus and stockpile draft picks before Tuesday’s 3 p.m. trade deadline?

It sounds great in theory, but this is the NFL, not MLB, where deadline deals can yield a premium.

With the contracts and health status of Khalil Mack, Allen Robinson, Akiem Hicks, Eddie Jackson, Robert Quinn, etc. maybe, just maybe you find takers for one or two of them, but there’s no way you’re getting fair value or more than mid- to late-Day 3 draft choices.

Please don’t ask about dealing David Montgomery. It’s incredibly dumb.

About all you have to hang on to as Bears fans right now is the promise of Fields, Montgomery, Khalil Herbert, Darnell Mooney and Cole Kmet forming the nucleus of a real offense if everything else is fixed.

And you have the specter of general manager Ryan Pace and coach Matt Nagy making those moves, knowing it only can make the team worse this year while they are battling to hang on to their jobs.

The plan for this season was to try to thread a difficult needle, remain a playoff team with Andy Dalton at quarterback while developing the uber-talented Fields.

Pace and Nagy had a plan for that, and it even showed promise through the Bengals game.

But it all disappeared when the team inexplicably tossed the plan out the window, benching Dalton two weeks later before he ever had a chance to show if he could execute it and before Fields had done anything on the field to merit it.

There is a significant minority of Bears Nation that has insisted they don’t care how much they lose this year as long as Fields started immediately, in spite of an overwhelming majority of evidence that starting them too soon is not the way to develop franchise QBs.

Well, you got what you wanted, and you’re going to lose a lot.

But for those who still care about winning, and long for an organization that can win and develop a young quarterback at the same time, which is what the good ones do, where are you left?

And what about the futures of Pace and Nagy? They have been part of this problem, but certainly not all of it.

If it was one or both of them, and them alone, who elected to pull the plug on Dalton prematurely, then it’s hard to see them saving their jobs, and they shouldn’t.

But if it was marching orders they were given, then these last nine games, regardless of the record, should give them a chance to still impact that decision if they can accelerate Fields’ development.

Absolutely none of this is an indictment of Fields. Anyone who didn’t know it was going to look like this for a while and take at least a year or two for him to become whoever he’s going to be shouldn’t be working in the league.

Great talents such as Fields don’t regress or suffer while actually earning their stripes. They develop.

Baptism by fire can work, but it also can do permanent damage in a number of ways to a number of people and leave permanent scars.

We can only wait now and hope that Fields doesn’t become a victim.

This didn’t have to happen, and the guy who made that QB decision is the one I’d like to see fired today.

• Hub Arkush is a Shaw Media correspondent.