Having been a Bears fan for over a decade, I’ve seen Sunday’s game more times than I’d like to admit.

Chicago was given a myriad of circumstantial advantages heading into the weekend’s tilt against a listing 1-4 Minnesota Vikings team. These advantages included (but were not limited to):

• A ‘Mini-Bye’ that afforded Chicago extra time to rest, scout, and prep for this game
• A surprise Wednesday announcement that Vikings’ superstar Justin Jefferson would be placed on IR, undoubtedly causing the Minnesota to scramble while planning their offense
• Plenty of tape on how the Vikings would handle Justin Fields defensively (thanks to Jalen Hurts providing a close comparison)
• A parade of returning Chicago starters (Kyler Gordon, Jaylon Johnson, Teven Jenkins, and Eddie Jackson) that looked to boost both sides of the ball
• All of the intrinsic momentum that winning your first game of the season provides

And yet, despite these advantages, Chicago lost the game and fell to 1-5 on the season. That may be the death knell for any playoff hopes the organization still had.

It’s a damn shame they managed to lose too. The Bears’ defense held the Vikings’ offense to 220 total yards and 12 offensive points, yet Chicago allowed its 4th defensive touchdown in 6 weeks and lost 19-13 all the same. The 2023 Bears always make one mistake too many — that’s a direct indictment on their coaching, if you ask me.

There are conversations to be had about Fields’ eyes against Brian Flores’ blitzes, how strange it was to see the Bears abandon the run while it was hot, Tyson Bagent’s overall performance & more, but now that Chicago’s starting Quarterback is likely to miss time with a dislocated thumb, the story of the season may change in a flash — next the Bears host a “Bad, But Not That Bad” Las Vegas Raiders team in a game that would’ve been winnable with Fields but has now become a battle of backup QBs.

If this team falls to 1-6, what keeps them competing?

What do Matt Eberflus’ season goals become?

Does a total reset of the organization become inevitable?

We’ll cross some of those bridges when we get to them, but I can’t help feeling like an era ended on Sunday. I’m just not sure whose era it was.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Good:

• Everyone on Defense chipped in. The 2023 Bears defense has received plenty of grief on this site this year, but with the season in the balance they played as good a game as you could ask yesterday. Jaylon Johnson broke up passes, Tyrique Stevenson stopped Jordan Addison on a key 3rd & long, Zacch Pickens added a TFL, and TJ Edwards powered past Alexander Mattison to get home on a blitz & tip a Kirk Cousins pass in the air & create a huge interception that Tremaine Edmunds was ready for.
  • It wasn’t the Vikings offense’s best game (I’m still not sure why they were so averse to spreading out their WRs and passing relentlessly), but that’s not important — the defense did what they had to do on Sunday by shutting out Minnesota in the 2nd half and offering their offense 6 opportunities to take the ball and score. Plenty of good from that unit.

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Amidst swirling rumors that foretold Matt Eberflus’ impending doom, the Chicago Bears shook their fist at destiny and blew out the Washington Commanders on the road. Given that the Bears were 5.5 point underdogs, it’s safe to say that no one expected this result — but this morning? I’m much happier for it all the same. Who doesn’t love a win?

The Bears’ big Thursday Night victory brings up a series of questions the team will look to answer over their next few weeks:

• Where has this level of play been all season?
• Now that he’s decidedly not-fired, how long is Matt Eberflus’ leash for the rest of the year?
• What will it take for Justin Fields to declare himself ‘The Guy’ in Chicago going forward?
• Has the locker room fully bounced back from the 0-4 start to the season?

But rushing to answer any of these questions too soon could lead to a foolish answer in the long run — for now, let’s all sit back and enjoy a weekend of stress-free football. Cheers!

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Good:

• DJ Moore is the offensive weapon that Chicago has dreamt of for years. On 10 targets, Moore caught 8 passes for 230 yards & 3 TDs. Need I say more? He broke tackles, he hauled in difficult passes, he accounted for ~81.5% of Justin Fields’ passing yardage, and he produced throughout all 4 quarters of the game. From start to finish, Moore looked nearly unguardable — in fact, Commanders HC Ron Rivera benched the rookie corner guarding him (Emmanuel Forbes) on account of his struggles. I don’t know if a greater hat-tip exists in the league.
  • NFL Next Gen Stats credited Moore with 141 more yards than expected on the day — the Run After Catch fiend was nothing short of immaculate. And yes, I don’t think he stepped out of bounds either.
• Justin Fields followed up his Broncos game with another great day. Fields’ role was more the steward than the superstar role on Thursday Night, but when his 1st passing option plays like DJ Moore played last night I’ll never fault him for feeding his playmaker the ball and getting out of the way. Quintessential quarterbacking.
  • Fields finished the day with another 4 TDs and a combined 339 yards between passing and rushing — he was efficient when throwing downfield & picked up key first downs with his legs, proving that his athletic toolkit can create sustainable offense outside of an over-reliance on splash plays.
  • The most impressive thing Fields did, in my opinion, was keep the Bears out of disaster on offense — Cody Whitehair’s snaps weren’t perfect and there wasn’t always an open man downfield (I assume), but Fields managed to throw away dangerous footballs when necessary and consistently caught the bad snaps, even turning a particularly bad one into a rushing first down. Sometimes a QB’s job is simply to keep the offense on schedule, and that’s exactly what Fields did.
• No Turnovers from the offense. Hell yeah.
• Darnell Wright, Nate Davis, Tevin Jenkins, take a bow. The Offensive Line is always hard to pick apart on the live watching, but it seemed as if Fields had consistent pocket time and the Bears ran the ball without issue. Remember, Washington’s Defensive Line is full of stars — for Nate Davis, Darnell Wright, and Teven Jenkins to hold their own like they did is remarkable. Hopefully they can keep it up.
• Gervon Dexter Sr & the Rookie Class stepped up when needed. Wright has been as good as you can ask a rookie OT to be. Both Bears starting CBs in today’s win came from their 2023 Rookie Class and each player held their own. Gervon Dexter Sr. contributed 3 pressures tonight. It was a banner day for Poles’ latest draft class — hopefully the group keeps it up.

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The 2023 Bears season hasn’t started the way anyone wanted it to, especially on offense. At times, the play has been downright ugly.

But Chicago’s issues aren’t as simple as a Quarterback, an OC, an OL, or anything else — it’s an ‘everyone’ issue. And in today’s Dissecting a Drive, I take you through 11 great examples of exactly what is (and isn’t) going wrong across the board.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

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Eventually, we may point back at September 24th, 2023 and see the day the Chicago Bears’ fortunes changed for the better.

On that day, the Houston Texans and Arizona Cardinals willed their way to surprise victories over better opponents while veteran quarterback Andy Dalton failed to push the Carolina Panthers over the Seattle Seahawks in a tight game on the road.

Thus, as the Chicago Bears fell to the Kansas City Chiefs, the Bears began to separate themselves in the most important football race that nobody wants to win — the race to the top of the 2024 NFL Draft, where Chicago would own the #1 & #4 overall picks if the season ended today.

For an organization in desperate need of talent at all positions (including quarterback), picks like these could be a godsend.

They could be the Bears’ ticket to a generational quarterback (Caleb Williams/Drake Maye) and a generational receiver (Marvin Harrison Jr.) or left tackle (Olumuyiwa Fashanu).

They could be the fuel behind a near-instantaneous Cincinnati-like turnaround, with Williams and his draft-classmate forming the bedrock of an offense that will define Chicago as they push to compete within a few years’ time.

It’s possible that eventually we may see things that way. But today is not that day.

Because what we saw yesterday was, in a word, unacceptable. And it has to change.

Weighing Chicago’s Options

In a game where Chicago managed to fall behind 34-0 at halftime, three things became clear:

(1) The Chicago Bears have a Defensive Head Coach that currently leads one of the NFL’s worst defenses. Details are sloppy, there’s no plan in place to supplement poor pass-rushers, and through three 2023 games we’ve yet to see an opposing QB look bothered in the pocket. Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid only needed one set of adjustments to pick this scheme apart on Sunday and once their offense started rolling they never stopped.

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Robert Altman’s Kansas City (1996)

Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears this Week?

I.

Always.

Like.

THE.

Chicago.

Bears.

Preparing for Decimation 

Here are my three easy ways to make Sunday’s game a more palatable experience for you, the Bears fan.

(1) If you drink, start drinking at kickoff of the early games. You don’t have to go crazy, but you don’t want to be angrily staring at the television screen as Fields stands endlessly in the pocket, failing to notice both his wide-open receivers and Chris Jones sprinting at him. I recommend 2-3 drinks during the early window, with an option for rapid acceleration as Bears/Chiefs gets out of hand.

(2) Parlay the Chiefs ML with whatever bet you like for Sunday Night Football. You’re not getting anything when the Chiefs win the game, but if you parlay them with either the Steelers OR the Raiders on Sunday night, you’re suddenly in the +odds. If the Bears win, you’re happy! When the Bears don’t win, you’ll have a chance to win a few quid come the evening hours.

(3) Disassociate yourself emotionally. I know this is easier said than done but give it a try. I have personally not invested one ounce of emotion into either of the first two contests this season and I’m the better for it. This is not a good football team. They are poorly coached. They are poorly quarterbacked. And neither of those things is going to radically improve in the coming months. The ceiling for this season is “eh” so why invest more than that?

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The short version: Fields struggled mightily on Sunday, though the Bears’ offensive line and offensive coordinator certainly made their fair share of mistakes. But we’ll talk more on that later this evening.

The slightly-less short version: Justin Fields is struggling to consistently get to his 3rd (sometimes 2nd) read without running into timing issues, and there’s no pair of plays where that was more evident than Fields’ 1st sack of the game, where he missed DJ Moore wide open on the play’s backside…

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This Bears season has gotten off to the worst start possible — they haven’t just lost two winnable games, they haven’t just watched the coaching staff struggle, but the QB that carried the weight of the franchise into the 2023 season looks like the most worry-fraught version of himself imaginable. Right now, every part of this football team is ugly to watch.

Worse yet, if you listen to the early portion of the Twitter Spaces that Jeff and I recorded pre-game, it’s as if we could see this loss coming. After so much struggle in Week 1, how far could the team truly bounce back in Week 2?

It’s heartbreaking. If Chicago loses to the Chiefs next week (and certainly if they lose to the Broncos the week after), the season may be over before it fully started. So how do we assess the blame?

The Head Coach

Let’s start at the top. Matt Eberflus took over for Alan Williams as the defensive playcaller in yesterday’s game, but the results were every bit as uninspiring as they were the week before.

It’s not as if the Bears didn’t try to make changes — Matt Eberflus called quite a few blitz/pressure looks early, but Baker Mayfield and the Buccaneers offense handled the extra rushers and punished the Bears with the brutal efficiency of a bona fide NFL offense.

Now 2 weeks into the 2023 season, the Bears’ defense has allowed an almost perfect passer rating on 3rd & 4th downs — that’s unacceptable. It’s one thing to understand that Chicago’s defense lacks talent in the front 4, but to invest the money and draft picks that they did into their defense & produce so poorly on key downs is untenable for a coach that specializes in that side of the ball.

Bears defense against the pass on 3rd/4th down:

– 20/23 (87%), 282 yards (12.3 Y/A), 3 TDs

– Eight 15+ yard receptions allowed

– 1.012 EPA/dropback allowed (32nd by about double lol)

– 157.3 passer rating allowed

— Brad Spielberger, Esq. (@SpielbergerBrad) September 18, 2023

Expectations for this defense were never high, but after signing 3 new defensive linemen in Free Agency (DeMarcus Walker, Yannick Ngakoue, Andrew Billings) and drafting 2 more with Top 70 picks (Zacch Pickens, Gervon Dexter Sr) I think it’s fair to expect better from this unit than what what may be the worst results in football for the 2nd year running.

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Originally I was planning on dissecting one of the many defensive drives, but while prepping for last night’s stream I found a drive that perfectly encapsulated the Bears’ issues against Green Bay — with that in mind, I broke down all 8 plays from Chicago’s 2nd offensive series in the latest episode of Dissecting a Drive.

In the video we discuss:

• Where did Justin Fields improve from 2022? Where did he struggle on Sunday?
• How did Getsy set up his offense for success? What could he improve?
• Route spacing issues, bad snaps, and other execution errors
• Much, much more

Check it out and let me know what you think!

All-22 Breakdown Stream:

If you’re into All-22 film breakdowns, I stream every Tuesday Night during the season to talk through the ups and downs of the game! Come check it out!

I watched the Packers-Bears All-22 tape so that you don’t have to — here were some of my notes:

Getsy Gets Ahead of Himself:

Luke Getsy and the Bears started this game off strong, but as the contest wore on Getsy displayed a strange habit of telling on himself with the Bears’ formation — below is a screenshot of the infamous D’Onta Foreman screen pass that lost 7 yards, and if you look at the personnel that Chicago split out wide you too will see the screen coming.

On this first down, the #Bears go 3-wide with:

– Kmet (TE)
– Tonyan (TE)
– Blasingame (FB)

Can you guess which playcall this is? Hint: It's not 4 verticals. pic.twitter.com/nq42iU5YPS

— Robert Schmitz (@robertkschmitz) September 11, 2023

But that wasn’t the only moment where it seemed as if Green Bay read Luke Getsy’s mind — here’s another example of the Bears’ formation tipping a play and resulting in a massive start to the second half. With Blasingame (a fullback) out wide to the left side, the Packers send Devonte Wyatt straight upfield in anticipation of a Justin Fields bootleg that Blasingame would usually block for. Wyatt ends up on top of Fields before the quarterback fully turns around.

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