CHICAGO -- If you wanted less Perrish Cox, you got it. If you wanted a reduction in Jason McCourty, you got that too.

Fewer snaps for the Tennessee Titans' two starting cornerbacks didn’t help the team's cause in Chicago, where the Titans barely held on Sunday for a 27-21 victory over the Bears that got them back to .500 heading into their bye week.

Tennessee is a happy team right now and it should be, considering the 6-6 record and the state of the AFC South.

But the upgrades it needs at cornerback aren’t stashed on its bench and won't arrive for the season's final quarter. They are getting ready for conference championships or awaiting word on bowl bids.

For their 12th game, a team that has regularly rotated four safeties when they are healthy did the same with its four outside cornerbacks.

Cox yielded to rookie LeShaun Sims every other series, while Valentino Blake got some of McCourty’s time before McCourty was knocked out late with a bone bruise on his left knee.

But no combination of defensive backs was effective against Matt Barkley, the Bears' fourth quarterback behind the injured Jay Cutler and two players on injured reserve, Brian Hoyer and Connor Shaw.

Barkley dropped back to throw 54 times and wasn’t sacked. He completed 28 passes for 316 yards and three touchdowns, but also was intercepted in the red zone by linebacker Wesley Woodyard and safety Da'Norris Searcy.

“They didn’t want to make it too difficult for him,” said Brian Orakpo, the Titans' most productive pass-rusher. “They did some things to make his throws a lot easier. I’m not making excuses, but hey, we’re not supermen. We can’t get there in 1.5 seconds. Hats off to them, they had a game plan.”

Quick throws behind a line that got plenty of tight-end and running-back help worked just fine. Barkley had nine passes of 14 yards or more while targeting 11 players and connecting with nine.

McCourty got called for a 33-yard pass interference call against Marquess Wilson on the first play from scrimmage. Sims was flagged for pass interference against Deonte Thompson in the second quarter for a field-flipping 45 yards.

And the Titans were a third-down sieve that didn’t do enough on winnable downs to get Marcus Mariota and the offense back on the field.

Eight times Barkley hit passes to convert difficult third downs: third-and-14, third-and-7, third-and-7, third-and-5, third-and-5, third-and-10, third-and-10 and third-and-11.

Nobody’s winning a division, no matter how bad its membership, giving up conversions like that.

With the Bears at the Titans’ 7-yard line and 47 seconds left in the game, Chicago had four chances to win it. The reason the Bears didn’t was as much because of their own deficiencies as the Titans’ effectiveness.

Cox, Sims and nickelback Brice McCain were on the field then.

Joshua Bellamy dropped the first-down pass in the end zone in front of Cox, who fell down. And while it would have been a more difficult catch, Thompson dropped the fourth-down pass in the back of the end zone.

“Normally it always bounced the other way,” Cox said. “He’d have caught that. We would have been on the opposite side.”

The Titans' offense stalled after halftime, producing only five first downs, 150 net yards and six points. That helped put the pressure on the defense and it was almost more than the group could handle.

Short yardage was an issue again.

A week after a crucial fourth-and-1 miss by DeMarco Murray in a loss at Indianapolis, the Titans had Mariota feed the running back a shovel pass on a third-and-2 that could have helped the Titans ice the game. Murray was stopped after just 1 yard, forcing the punt that gave Chicago its final shot.

“We could have easily put that game away, and we didn’t do it,” left tackle Taylor Lewan said. “That third-and-2, we should have got that first down. I’m not sure what happened. There were a bunch of times where the offense could have really took over like it has in the past and we didn’t do it.”

It came down to the defense. Frankly, the unit was lucky to withstand the Bears’ last charge.

The Titans finish with the Broncos, at the Chiefs, at the Jaguars and against the Texans.

They can’t expect those teams to drop winning touchdown throws, and they’re going to have to cover better to build on a fortunate victory.