Critics of the Vikings and their 4-6 record have to realize that quarterback Teddy Bridgewater made only his sixth career start in Sunday's 21-13 loss at Chicago.

Like most first-year quarterbacks, Bridgewater is showing again that if your name isn't Andrew Luck, you usually don't step in as a signal-caller and set the world on fire until either you are with a super team, or you get a chance to learn on the job by getting a lot of experience.

The No. 32 overall choice in this year's NFL draft out of Louisville fell to 3-3 as a starter Sunday. He has completed 137 of 225 passes for 1,479 yards, four touchdowns and six interceptions for a 75.0 quarterback rating.

On Sunday, Bridgewater went 18-of-28 for only 158 yards, one TD and one interception. He managed the offense efficiently in the first quarter as the Vikings jumped out to a 10-0 lead, but in those two scoring drives he only threw for 19 yards on 5-for-6 passing.

But there was simply no passing game from Bridgewater the rest of the way. It wasn't until the fourth quarter that he threw for 102 yards on the Vikings' final two drives. On the final drive, he completed three of four passes for 42 yards and drove the team to the Bears 29-yard line before being intercepted by safety Ryan Mundy.

Bridgewater told reporters in Chicago after the game that the Bears defense did throw some new looks at the Vikings, which might have stymied the offense.

"They did some things different, but we know we can play better," he said. "We didn't do enough to win this game today, offensively especially."

The Bears had given up more than 50 points in back-to-back losses coming into Sunday, and the Vikings knew they were going to see a more aggressive defense.

"We knew coming into this game that Chicago was a defense full of pride," Bridgewater said. "They have a bunch of guys on that defense that have established themselves in this league and we knew it was going to be a challenge for us. They were going to play with a lot of pride, they've been receiving a lot of heat over the last couple weeks. We knew they were playing with a chip on their shoulder."

Did Bridgewater have any idea why the offense couldn't find any consistency?

"That's one of those deals where we'll come back and discuss what happened tomorrow," he said. "We have meetings and everything and find out what the deal was. I know we can play much better. We didn't do enough to win this game. Whether it's in the running game or passing game we have to come out much faster and continue to make the other team press."

Offensive struggled

Vikings coach Mike Zimmer said that while the offense struggled, he thought the defense, which gave up 468 total yards to the Bears, might have played a part in the offense looking inept. The Vikings nearly gave up twice as many yards as they recorded on offense (243).

"We didn't allow them to get into any kind of rhythm whatsoever throughout the day, because we let [the Bears] keep converting on drives," Zimmer said. "I think it's hard offensively when you're sitting on the sideline for a long time. I think that was part of it."

Zimmer added that Bridgewater's play did not show some of the improvement that the rookie had made in helping the team to victories their two games before the bye week.

"It was not as good as it has been," Zimmer said. "I thought in the fourth quarter he did better, but the last throw at the end of the ballgame was not a good situation. I thought it was up and down today."

As for what Zimmer's opinion on the rest of the season to make it a success, he said: "We have to play better than we did today, that's for sure. If we don't play better than we do today, then I don't know. I'm disappointed we didn't play better. I thought we would play, I thought we would move the ball well offensively and play better defensively than what we did."

Things looked bright for the Vikings when they beat Tampa Bay and Washington, but now Sunday they face one of the hottest teams in the NFL in the Packers, who showed how good they are by walking all over the Eagles on Sunday afternoon.

Made mistakes

Gophers linebacker De'Vondre Campbell, following the 31-24 loss to Ohio State on Saturday, said he knew going in that Buckeyes quarterback J.T. Barrett, who passed for 200 yards and ran for 189 more, was going to be hard to contain.

However, Campbell said that had everyone done their assignments and read the keys, it wouldn't have been as bad as it was.

"I mean, he's a great player. He kind of took advantage of our mistakes," Campbell said.

On the defense in the second half, when the Gophers outgained Ohio State 170 to 135, Campbell said: "I think we really just went into halftime and made a few slight adjustments, not anything too big, just kind of put in a couple new calls that we thought would kind of disrupt them. … The only thing we felt was really hurting us was the quarterback's power, because any time a quarterback can run the ball by you is kind of demoralizing."

Gophers defensive back Briean Boddy-Calhoun, who made a key interception in the game, also believes that coach Jerry Kill's team has a good chance to win its remaining two games if it can eliminate the mistakes it made against Ohio State.

"At the end of the day it's still an L, but you can take away a lot of things, just like every game," Boddy-Calhoun said. "We proved to ourselves that we can hang with the top teams. That's the No. 8 team in the country. We proved that we cannot only hang but we can have a really strong chance of beating them if we don't make some of the mistakes we do on defense."

As quarterback Mitch Leidner noted, the Gophers' chances were hurt by the absence of some key wide receivers that were injured.

"It can be tough, but I thought that guys did a pretty good job stepping up here and there, and we've got to just keep building it up at those positions and getting better there," Leidner said.

The Gophers hurt themselves on an illegal formation penalty that pushed them 5 yards back on what was a third-and-inches play.

"That's my fault, I didn't communicate out to the receivers to get on the ball when I made a lineup call because the clock was low," Leidner said.

The Gophers can beat Nebraska if they can duplicate what Wisconsin did Saturday. Melvin Gordon made all the news with his record 408 rushing yards in a 59-24 victory, but the Badgers defense also shut down Cornhuskers running back Ameer Abdullah, who is averaging 131.9 yards per game but was held to 69 yards on 18 carries, and quarterback Tommy Armstrong, who is averaging 188.9 yards passing per game but was held to 62 by the Badgers.

Sid Hartman can be heard weekdays on 830-AM at 7:40, 8:40 and 9:20 a.m. and on Sundays at 9:30 a.m. shartman@startribune.com