LAKE FOREST, Ill. – It doesn’t take a football expert to identify the problems that have plagued the Bears defense recently in equally embarrassing blowout losses to the Bengals and Cardinals.

Finding a solution isn’t nearly as easy. But veteran middle linebacker Hunter Hillenmeyer believes that the struggling unit would benefit from being more resilient and playing with more confidence.

Linebacker Hunter Hillenmeyer tackles Cardinals running back Beanie Wells Sunday at Soldier Field.

“I’m not trying to play team psychologist or anything, but I just think that there’s a mindset that we need to have,” Hillenmeyer said Monday, one day after the Bears permitted four touchdowns and two field goals on Arizona’s first six possessions in a 41-21 drubbing at Soldier Field.

“You saw there at the beginning of the game, we come out and things look like they’re going well, and then they convert one third down and we’re in crisis mode for the next three quarters, and that can’t happen. 

"Bad things happen to every team in every football game, and we need to find a way on defense that when those bad things happen, we bounce back.

“[If] we miss a play, [we’ve got to be] ready to make a play. We [can’t] miss a play and then go into the tank and say, ‘Oh no, here we go again.’”

That seemingly is what transpired Oct. 25 in Cincinnati when the Bears allowed six touchdowns and one field goal on the Bengals’ first seven possessions in a 45-10 rout.

“I don’t think there are any easy answers, and a lot of things that people are reading today from players probably sound like a broken record from the Cincinnati game,” Hillenmeyer said.

“But we know what we’re capable of. Lance [Briggs] stood up in the locker room after the game [Sunday] and pointed out that the most important thing—and generally we’re always talking from a defensive perspective—is that you’ve got to believe that you’re going to win out there. You’ve got to believe that you’re better than the other team.”

That’s exactly how Hillenmeyer and his teammates approached their Nov. 1 game against the woeful Cleveland Browns. In that contest, the Bears generated a season-high five takeaways and scored their first defensive touchdown of the season in a 30-6 victory.

“I think that the biggest difference regardless of Xs and Os and missed tackles and whatever else is that when we played Cleveland—I know they’re a bad football team and not as good as the teams we played the week before and the week after—but we went into that game knowing we were going to win,” Hillenmeyer said. “We went into that game with a confidence and a swagger and an attitude.

“I know people felt that game was kind of an ugly win, but it was the best performance we’ve had on defense all year. Regardless of who your opponent is, if you go into a game with that mentality, better things are going to happen.”

It appeared that the Bears defense played with that type of mindset for a brief period in the second half when Zackary Bowman’s 39-yard interception return helped set up a touchdown that trimmed Arizona’s lead to 34-21.

“It was nice that we didn’t give up, that we kept fighting,” Hillenmeyer said. “But at the same time does it take that to make you play your best? I think that if anybody out there really feels like they weren’t really playing their hardest until then, that’s a problem because [players shouldn’t feel that] ‘now we might have a chance to win, so I’m going to step up my game.’ It needs to be that intensity from the first quarter until the end of the game.”