Last week began with comparisons between the 2020 and 2018 Chicago Bears defenses. This week begins with us finding there is no comparison.

There are two simple truths about Monday night’s beat down:

One. The Bears couldn’t realistically expect to win by scoring just three offensive points.

Two. The Bears couldn’t realistically expect to win by allowing 24 points.

Only one offense this season has scored more than 24 points against the Rams. That came in a weird Week Three game as the then-red hot Buffalo Bills took a huge lead early. Since then, the Rams have allowed 10 or fewer points in three of four — Monday night included. (As you read that, keep in mind that the Bears haven’t held a single opponent to 10 or fewer points yet this season.)

To win on Monday night, the Bears needed the game to be a low-scoring slugfest. Their offense looked only slightly worse than we should’ve expected going against a top-five defense. The Bears defense, however, couldn’t get off the field in the first three quarters allowing drives that either resulted in scores or flipped the field, leaving the offense in an inopportune position. Five of the Bears first six drives began inside their own 20. For the game, they had eight drives start inside their own 20 and five inside the 10. Imagine how fun that is for Nick Foles when the team is asking Rashaad Coward to block Aaron Donald.

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Nick Foles, in his inspirational postgame press conference on Sunday, said, “without belief nothing is possible”. There’s truth to that. But with all due respect to Foles, belief alone isn’t going to get the Chicago Bears offense anywhere.

Foles was excited after the Bears defeated the Carolina Panthers to move to 5-1. And he should be, as another win buys the Bears more time to figure out what is hurting their offense. Foles believes they will, and he has his reasons, but six games into the season — and 38 into the Matt Nagy era — there’s little reason for anyone on the outside to believe the Bears are going to get where they need to be offensively.

There’s no reason to believe Foles’ belief is anything but blind optimism. In the same press conference he also said, “There have been teams that have been bad offensively for a very long time, we’re not one of those teams.”

But, hey, he’s new here. We’ll cut him some slack on that one.

This interview from Nick Foles after the game 😳 pic.twitter.com/Z9Pmm6JBPu

— Bears Film Room (@BearsFilmRoom) October 19, 2020

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With four wins in their first five games, the Chicago Bears did more than tread water over this initial stretch. They put themselves in good position to make a playoff run. And while beating bad teams typically doesn’t mean much, last Thursday’s win over Tampa Bay was a good sign that these Bears might not just be the best of the bad teams. They might actually be good.

The next five weeks will tell the tale.

The offense has to be better. On Friday, Matt Nagy hammered home a point about how they needed to be more detailed, but it’s unclear if he realized that he was really telling the world his offense is poorly coached. The details of a specific offense, after all, have to be taught. They’re not innately known.  The good news is that the Bears had some more time to figure it out and they’ll need it with this upcoming stretch of games.

The defense gets a pass, but shouldn’t. Playing offense is more difficult when the defense gives up early scores and puts the team in a double-digit hole before halftime. While they rank in the top ten in many statistical categories, the truth is, they should be much higher considering who they played and the injuries they’ve encountered. In every game, there has been a stretch of three or four possessions where the opposing offensive coordinator runs circles around Chuck Pagano. (Perhaps the biggest difference between Pagano and Vic Fangio is that Fangio would figure out the problem after one possession.)

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Matt Nagy, an offensive head coach, has had far too many postgame press conferences like Sunday, wherein he proclaimed the offense “wasn’t good enough”. No, his offense wasn’t good enough Sunday. They weren’t good enough in year one. They weren’t good enough in year two. And through four games of year three, they’re still not good enough.

The sign of a good head coach is one who has success on the side of the ball from which he came.

• Bill Belichick always has top 10 defenses.
• Andy Reid has only ranked outside the top 20 in scoring twice — his first and last years in Philadelphia.
• Kyle Shanahan has had a bunch of injuries this year, but his team in 11th in yardage and 13th in points. (Shanahan’s 49ers have never ranked outside the top half of the league in yardage or in the bottom 10 in scoring.)

But after Sunday’s woeful performance, the Bears are 25th in scoring and 24th in yardage. They’re 31st in third down conversions, 25th in the red zone.

The passing game is averaging an anemic 6.4 yards per attempt while still being intercepted 3.2 percent of the time. They’re sixth in passing attempts — partially due to the fact that they fall behind every week — yet 21st in yardage. It isn’t a stretch to say they have the worst passing offense in the league.

And, hey, it’s not just that they can’t pass the ball, they’re 20th in rushing and are the only team in the league without a rushing touchdown this year.

This comes after they changed out the offensive coordinator, offensive line coach, quarterback coach and, of course, the quarterback himself.

Nagy is running out of people to blame.

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The Chicago Bear recipe for a successful 2020 season always included one absolute necessity: great defense. Three games into the season, they’ve been far from great.

The rankings? They don’t look that bad.

• 9th in points allowed.
• 12th in takeaways.
• 15th in yardage.
• Allowed the fewest passing touchdowns: 2. (two)
• 2nd in opponent passer rating (71.4), despite playing three solid quarterbacks.

The biggest problem is the run defense, as the Bears have allowed a shocking five yards per carry and four rushing touchdowns. And numbers alone don’t tell the story.

The statistics don’t tell you about how in each of the Bears first three games, the other team was missing its best offensive player. They don’t tell you about the dropped touchdown in Detroit or the fourth down failures that allowed the Giants to get within 10 yards of a win. The numbers don’t tell you that Atlanta was without two of its top three wide receivers for the second half and went uber-conservative.

(In fairness, they also don’t tell you about the bad calls that took a pick-six away, or two very iffy roughing the passer penalties — one of which took away a strip sack. But you can bet every team has similar arguments.)

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Last week a strong argument emerged that the Bears might be better off not extending Allen Robinson’s contract, instead relying on Anthony Miller to be the team’s top wide receiver.

That argument died on Sunday.

Calling the two passes Miller didn’t catch drops is disingenuous. Both would’ve required phenomenal moments from the young receiver. But Miller has that ability! What changed from Week One when he made those plays to Week Two when he couldn’t? How can the Bears rely on him when they don’t know what they’re getting from week-to-week?

Dan Pompei was among those who promoted that idea that the Bears could have a number one receiver in Miller. Nobody questions that Miller has the talent to be The Guy, but NFL history is littered with talented wide receivers who never developed the consistency to be The Guy. See: Price, Peerless.

Remember to hit “Real-Time” on the bottom of @TheAthletic app. Check out and comment on our thoughts on Allen Robinson, plus some other Bears statistical nuggets from Week 1 pic.twitter.com/NYPnVjHuod

— Kevin Fishbain (@kfishbain) September 15, 2020

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The Bears came away with a road divisional win in Week One.

Whether or not they’re a good football right now is irrelevant.

The team struggled on both sides of the ball for much of Sunday’s game, offering some trademarks of bad teams. Thankfully for Matt Nagy and company, the Lions specialize in those trademarks.

But the Bears still showed enough potential to lead us to believe they could, one day, even soon, be a good team.

Defense.

Playoff hopes were based on having a dominant defense. Not the kind of unit that allows 4.8 yards per carry and barely sniffs Matthew Stafford all day, despite a backup right tackle. Not the unit that allowed Danny Amendola and T.J. Hockenson to dominate the middle of the field. (One shudders to think what the passing attack would’ve looked like had Kenny Golladay played.)

They must find a way to be better against the run. Perhaps that answer can come in free agency with Marcell Dareus and Snacks Harrison seemingly available — although the latter may choose to sit out 2020.

The pass rush answers are internal. Khalil Mack will recover from a knee ailment that landed him on the injury report. Robert Quinn will return within the next two weeks. (If not the club would have put him on IR.) Mario Edwards can also give them a boost on passing downs when he’s up to speed.

Offense.

Offensively, it was more of the same for the Bears in that their quarterback spent most of the game looking completely incompetent. Whether he was spinning in the pocket, somehow over-throwing a 6’7” tight end, or missing open targets down the field, Mitch Trubisky looked like the quarterback of last year.

The hope, obviously, is that Trubisky’s slow start was a matter of rust; the residue of having to split reps in training camp. We’ll see. If Trubisky can’t play better than he did for most of Sunday, Nick Foles will be on the field before October.

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After visible training camp practices concluded Saturday, nearly ever beat reporter had Nick Foles ahead of Mitch Trubisky in the team’s quarterback competition. That tells us all we need to know about Trubisky.

(In fairness, those on the Bears beat are hardly experts when it comes to judging quarterbacks and nobody has any actual idea what the Bears are looking for. But all reports have indicated that Trubisky has yet to grow out of the maddening inconsistencies that led to Foles being acquired in the first place.)

Whether it’s running out of bounds for a two-yard loss instead of throwing the ball away, making questionable decisions or throwing scattershot incompletions and interceptions, Trubisky has seemingly looked exactly like the player he has been throughout his career.

That might be surprising to some because there was at least a portion of the fan base that thought Trubisky’s faults weren’t actually his in the first place and blamed his shoulder injury, which came after he already had three mostly bad showings, as well as his offensive and his skill players and the moon and the stars. Even for the more realistic fans, there was at least some hope that Trubisky would be more motivated this year. In a contract year, with a challenger looking him in the face, how could Trubisky not be at his best?

Well maybe we’ve already seen his best.

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If the 2020 Chicago Bears are going to return to the playoffs, there’s a good chance that the players on this list are going to be the ones who lead them there. They have three players among the top three at their positions and a handful more who are near the top. Four of the top 10 players earned All Pro honors in 2018 and should be back to that level in 2020. Another one of the players is consistently underrated, despite being pretty much perfect.

The Bears top 10 players just might stack up with anybody else in the league.

10. Tarik Cohen, RB/Specialist

Coming off a horrendously inefficient season, there’s plenty of reason to think Cohen will play more like the 2017 and 2018 versions of himself. What we learned in 2019 is that Cohen can’t be the star of the offense. He a gimmick, someone who needs others to open the field for him. Once it’s open, he’s still dangerous.

9. Danny Trevathan, ILB

Trevathan was having a career year before injuries hit. In nine games he had 50 solo tackles and seemed to be all over the field, every single week. The 30-year-old is the leader of the defense.

8. Roquan Smith, ILB

Smith gets too much grief for his 2019 campaign. Despite inconsistent play early in the season, he finished with 101 tackles (five behind the line of scrimmage) and two sacks in 12 games. Before he was injured late in the season, Smith was playing the position better than anyone else the Bears had last year. If he played 16 games like he played his last eight last year, he’s going to be known as one of the premier defensive players in the league.

7. Kyle Fuller, CB

He has mostly escaped criticism, but 2019 was as rough for Kyle Fuller as it was for anyone else on the defense. Fuller allowed a passer rating of 102 and missed 12 tackles — an astronomical 12.8 percent of his attempts. He still had some ball production with three interceptions and 12 PBUs, but he didn’t play at the level the Bears expect. That said, he’s still a really good player and he can’t take all the blame as a dormant pass rush can make life difficult for any defensive back.

6. Robert Quinn, Edge

Re-emerging on the scene after a handful of so-so years, Quinn could be the key to the Bears defense going to the next level. After collecting 40 sacks in three years, Quinn struggled with injuries with the Rams, but was still productive on a per-game basis. Even in Quinn’s worst year — 2018 — he had more pressures and sacks than Leonard Floyd managed in either of the last two years. Those numbers figure to go up as Quinn plays opposite Khalil Mack. For his career, Quinn has averaged more sacks per game than Julius Peppers.

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There’s almost a certain point where you can see where the talent on the Bears roster breaks.

The bottom of this list is utterly unimpressive; late-round rookies and NFL journeymen. The top ten: a handful of established NFL players, some who have been stars and some who can be stars going forward.

The word potential could be used for so many of these players and what happens in 2020 could depend on how many of them touch their ceilings.

39. Barkevious Mingo, Edge

While he’s certainly a draft bust, Mingo deserves credit for sticking around. While the 2019 season was a wash as he played just 73 snaps for Houston, he was a pretty regular contributor to Seattle’s solid defense in 2018 and started six games for Chuck Pagano’s Colts in 2017. Doesn’t provide much for pass rush, but is a good special teams player and certainly better than the edges the Bears had beyond their starters last year.

38. Darnell Mooney, WR

Given the odd off-season and the team’s signing of an established veteran to do, essentially, the same job, it might be difficult for Mooney to find the field in 2020. But the Bears need speed and speed is among the traits the rookie receiver offers. A four-year player at Tulane, Mooney is also considered a polished route-runner. It’ll just be a matter of getting the details down.

37. Sherrick McManis, ST

McManis is always tough to rank simply because none of the coaches ever seem to trust him on defense, even though he has always seemed to play well. As it is, he’s among the best special teams player in the league.

36. Kevin Toliver II, CB

Expect Toliver to start the season opposite Kyle Fuller, which may not be a good thing. Toliver has certainly had his struggles in coverage/tackling when playing but those spurts have been too few and far between to get much of a feel for if he can actually play.

35. J.P. Holtz, FB

The Bears are going to try to be a more powerful running team in 2020 and Holtz could factor into that. There’s little doubt that the player none of us had ever previously heard of gave the Bears a little bit of a spark last year.

34. Trevis Gipson, Edge

Gipson might have a learning curve, going from a defensive lineman in college to an edge player in the NFL, but he certainly has the skill set. A long and physical player, Gipson will be raw, but the Bears don’t need him to be great just yet.

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