Opinion: Arizona Cardinals overcome their many errors to beat Chicago Bears, maintain NFL's best record

CHICAGO — It wasn't their intent, but the NFL's schedule makers did the Cardinals a huge favor by scheduling the Bears for them to play a week after being off Thanksgiving weekend.

Against nearly any other team, the Cardinals would have lost given the way they played Sunday in chilly, rainy weather at Soldier Field. 

Instead, the Cardinals (10-2) did enough to beat an awful Bears team, 33-22, and maintain the best record in the NFL. Oddly, the Cardinals weren't nearly as good as the score indicated.

The victory wasn't easy, and it certainly wasn't pretty. But he Cardinals defense intercepted Andy Dalton four times and gave the offense easy commutes into the end zone.

The offense took advantage three times, scoring touchdowns and dropping the Bears to 4-8 on the season.

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The Cardinals struggled for much of the afternoon. They missed tackles, throws and holes. They jumped offside at terrible times. They took a delay of game penalty after a timeout. They roughed the punter after an important defensive stand. And on and on.

As coaches like to say, the Cardinals left a lot of points on the field and there is much to clean up before they plays the Rams on Dec. 13, a Monday night.

Chances are, they will accomplish this. Quarterback Kyler Murray is back after more than a month and three games away because of an ankle injury.

The inactivity showed, but Murray did throw for two touchdowns and run for two more.

Receiver DeAndre Hopkins also returned after missing three games and caught a touchdown pass in the first quarter.

In the end, the Cardinals took advantage of a bad team that does everything it can to give away came.

The Cardinals, finally, accepted the gifts from the host team. Not every victory is going to be pretty and Sunday's certainly wasn't. But it counts just the same, and there is time to fix what went wrong.

Reach Kent Somers at Kent.Somers@gannett.com. Follow him on twitter @kentsomers.