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. (@PFF_Brad) 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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Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears This Week?

I.

Always.

Like.

THE.

Chicago.

Bears.

The Second Week, or Why this Game Matters

Everybody is down in the dumps, especially those fans who spent the last six months absurdly taunting other fans on social media with dumb phrases like “Fields is going to own the North” and “King Poles.” The Bears are still, quite obviously, not a good team. But no objective analyst expected them to be a good team. We did, however, expect them to be a far better team than was seen at Soldier Field on Sunday.

Forget a grain of salt. Week 1 should be digested with the tonnage of salt that is dumped on Michigan Avenue in anticipation of a January blizzard. That is not to say one should ignore the failings of the Bears against the Packers. But looking around the league, it was quite obvious that half the sport (if not more) was not ready to play regular season football. Joe Burrow couldn’t complete a pass. The Chiefs couldn’t catch. The Giants, with their supposedly top head coach, forgot they had a game. And then there is whatever Josh Allen was doing Monday night.

The Chicago Bears goals for the 2023 season do not change with Sunday’s result. This Bears team can still play relevant football in the month of December. They can still mount a campaign that inches near .500. But in order to do so they have to find a way to win Sunday in Tampa. With Kansas City looming in Week 3, they must do everything in their power to avoid an 0-3 start. (And one could argue a 1-1 start would give the Bears an opportunity to erase the sadness of Week 1 with a Week 3 upset.)

But perhaps most importantly, this program needs to overcome the building toxicity around it and deliver a solid effort. No more somber faces on the sideline. No more complaining about fans to the media. The Bears need belief, and belief only comes with victories. And this club hasn’t had one of those in a long time.

A Single Sentence on Several Films of 2023

Bottoms. Emma Seligman’s up-and-down comedy has a tour de force final half hour that’ll make it the most rewatchable film of the year.

Oppenheimer. Flashy and beautiful, Christopher Nolan’s historical epic is also a dramaturgically flimsy and emotionally hollow experience.

Past Lives. The foreign darling of the art house scene, Celine Song’s film is a lovely, if minor, effort.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. If serving no other purpose, this James Mangold-helmed fifth Indy picture has erased the jaundiced memory of the disastrous fourth installment and given one of Hollywood’s finest action heroes a suitable ending.

King Coal. This documentary tone poem, set in central Appalachia, could have been the natural heir to Barbara Kopple’s brilliant Harlan County, USA, but instead is a politically muddled and incomplete work, lacking the depth more voices from the community could have provided.

Note: The First Lady of DBB and I are seeing Barbie tonight, after several failed efforts to check it out. I’ll have thoughts on it next week. 

Five Key Points

• The Bears defense must limit Tampa’s big play potential, if it exists beyond Mike Evans. The Bucs had four scoring drives in their game vs. the Vikings, and they tell the story of an offense that struggles to move the ball with any authority. The drives were:
  • 4 plays, 0 yards (FG)
  • 7 plays, 61 yards (TD)
  • 16 plays, 75 yards (TD)
  • 10 plays, 38 yards (FG)
• Kirk Cousins was not good against the Bucs, but that was mostly on Cousins. Even with his errant tosses and multiple fumbles, he still produced 344 yards in the passing game. The plays will be there down the field for the Bears.
  • Two things have to happen for the Bears. Eberflus and Getsy must allow their quarterback to fling it and Fields must deliver the football, down the field, on time. Neither happened in Week 1.
• The Bucs gave their three backs – Rachaad White, Sean Tucker and Chase Edmonds – a shot, totaling 24 carries at only 2.5 yards per clip. Todd Bowles won’t care if the run game is successful. After watching Bears/Packers tape, he’ll stick with it for four quarters. (Tucker seems the most explosive of these backs by a sizable margin.)
• Ignore Minnesota’s rushing stats in the opener. Alexander Mattison was only given 11 carries and that offense is clearly going to be pass-first/pass-often. The Bucs gave up north of 120 yards per game rushing in 2022 and the Bears should be able control the game on the ground. The biggest question is whether this coaching staff will acknowledge the energy Roschon Johnson brought to the unit when on the field; Johnson looks like the kind of bruising back that can wear an opponent down over four quarters.
• Three defenders the Bears have to identify and deal with on every snap: Shaq Barrett, Antoine Winfield, Anthony Nelson. When the Bucs disrupt the pocket, they most often do so with these three guys. Barrett and Winfield are to be expected, but Nelson was all over the field against Minnesota.

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Following Sunday’s loss, the Tampa Bay game feels like a huge one for Chicago’s coaches coaches in particular — if you felt like I did, the most frustrating part about the Green Bay game was that the Bears’ supporting cast wasn’t nearly the issue it was in 2022.

• WRs got open
• DBs made plays in coverage
• Tremaine Edmunds flew around in coverage (sometimes too much)
• Andrew Billings went to war in the trenches
• The OL, while inconsistent, held a pocket against a good DL through the first quarter
  • In particular, Braxton Jones & Darnell Wright played well enough given their matchups

This isn’t a recipe for automatic and unquestioned success, but it’s enough to put together a competitive performance — I thought Chicago outplayed Green Bay in the first half, but after the Packers hit on a few big plays in the 3rd Quarter, it felt like the wheels fell off. You could call it a lack of poise, you could call it a lack of faith, but when fans & analysts alike started questioning a team’s effort before the 4th quarter began, you’ve got more problems than just roster talent.

Chicago’s coaches can win back quite a bit of favor with a big win on the road, but how will they go about doing it? What does Tampa like to do on defense, and how can the Bears counter that? How will they shift things to stop the Bucs’ offense? Nick Whalen & I put together a hell of a game preview on today’s episode of Bear With Us, but I wanted to share some of my thoughts in print. Let’s get into it.

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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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That was one way to start the season, wasn’t it?

The Chicago Bears, after months of build-up and roster additions, came out flat from the first whistle against Green Bay and got blown out of their own building before the 3rd quarter had ended. It was a day that could’ve heralded a new chapter within the storybook Bears-Packers rivalry, but instead it was… well, I’ll let Jeff say it for me.

(S)HITS principle.

— DaBearsBlog (@dabearsblog) September 10, 2023

After a game like that, I felt the need to sleep on my thoughts. I’ll have more posted later this afternoon, but I want to wait until I can watch the tape before really diving in on this game — I have a bad feeling that the tape may give us uncomfortable answers to questions we didn’t want to ask on both offense & defense.

It’s only Week 1, but that was as bad of a Week 1 game as I could’ve imagined. Chicago will need to turn things around in a hurry too — a loss to the Buccaneers (who just beat Minnesota on the road) will create legitimate stakes as the Bears take on the Chiefs in Arrowhead Stadium. Only six NFL teams since 1979 have ever started 0-3 and still made the playoffs.

The 2023 Bears don’t have outrageous expectations, but I’d think the organization had their sights set on a 7th seed playoff spot & major development from the roster’s young players. That may yet be achieved, but with tough matchups littered throughout the early weeks of Chicago’s schedule, the road to a playoff season got much harder last night.

Postgame Podcast:

Your Turn: Do you feel any better about yesterday’s game today?

There will be column writing from me throughout the season, but I am going to relegate most of my work to these game previews. I’m incredibly proud of the consistently excellent work being produced under the Schmitz regime at DBB and I hope I’ll now be able add some of my own flavor to the mix.

Why do I like the Chicago Bears this week?

I.

Always.

Like.

THE.

Chicago.

Bears.

Three Things the Bears MUST Do on Sunday

• Win the ground game.
  • The Bears had one of the league’s best rushing attacks in 2022, while also fielding one of the league’s worst rush defenses. In their two meetings with the Packers last season, they were outgained on the ground 203-180 and 175-155. Matt LaFleur is going to do everything in his power to make Jordan Love’s debut easier and that will include a healthy dose of the run game, putting pressure on Chicago’s weakest unit, their DL. If the Bears can’t slow Aaron Jones and AJ Dillon down, it’s unlikely they’ll slow down the Packers writ large.
• Catch interceptions.
  • Barring a few nice throws, Love has looked nervous this preseason, and that’s unlikely to change come the opener. When he gives the secondary opportunities, they must take advantage of them. For too many years we have watched the Bears drop easy interception after easy interception, often originating from the right hand of a Packers quarterback en route to the Hall of Fame.
• Get the fans excited early, and often.
  • This is going to be a Soldier Field ready to celebrate the dawn of a new era and the Bears have to meet the moment. Mount some promising early drives. Get points from those drives. Show that the Chicago Bears are finally ready to join the ranks of modern offensive football. (If the team comes out and runs it unsuccessfully on first and second down to open the game…well…it would be about the most tone-deaf play calling one can recall.) Too often the Bears have sent the home crowd into a lethargic malaise. Big, exciting moments on offense change that.

September 11th on Screen

Paul Schrader argues, in his seminal essay on film noir, that the “genre” is unique to America, and specifically to a post-war period (mid 40s to late 50s) that found a generation of heroic men returning from war to an uncertain future, and unsure identity. But as we commemorate the 22nd anniversary of 9/11 on Monday, it is interesting to look at a series of films made in New York City in the years after those attacks as questioning not only what it means to be a man in a post-traumatic environment, but also what it means to be the city unfairly targeted as representative of a national political identity to which it often did not and does not ascribe.

There are four films I would recommend looking at in this regard.

25th Hour (Spike Lee, 2002)

Unfaithful (Adrian Lyne, 2002)

Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy, 2007)

Before the Devil Know You’re Dead (Sidney Lumet, 2007)

As this is a topic for a broader research project of mine, I will not wallow in the weeds here. But these are four films that I consider four of the best of this century. If you’re interested in the aforementioned discussion, feel free to email me: jeff@dabearsblog.com.

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There’s nothing quite like NFL Week 1, is there?

After months of roster additions, subtractions, and schematic changes, the NFL’s 32 Teams will finally take the field this weekend and show us who’s here to content, who’s here to pretend, and everything else in between.

But between you and me, 15 of the 16 NFL games scheduled for this weekend might as well not exist — the Chicago Bears host the Green Bay Packers this Sunday at 3:25PM in the first game since Aaron Rodgers’ departure and it’s the only game on my mind.

How are the Bears going to attack the Packers’ defense? What are the Packers looking to do on offense? Moreover, who’s going to win? Nick Whalen & I put together a hell of a game preview on today’s episode of Bear With Us, but I wanted to share some of my thoughts in print. Let’s get into it.

Before the Teams Take the Field…

Keep an eye out for the Packers’ official Friday injury report. Explosive Packers WR Christian Watson was listed as a practice non-participant on Wednesday (hamstring injury), and if either he or WR Romeo Doubs (DNP — hamstring injury) can’t play on Sunday Jordan Love will be left throwing to rookies in his first 2023 NFL start.

That may sound like an exaggeration, but it isn’t — with TE Tyler Davis already on IR, Love’s Sunday receiving weapons could consist of:

• Rookie TE Luke Musgrave
• Rookie TE Tucker Kraft
• Rooke WR Jayden Reed
• 2nd year (7th round pick) WR Samori Toure
• Rookie WR Dontayvion Wicks, who was limited on Wednesday’s practice with a hamstring injury

The Packers also need OT David Bakhtiari (knee) and EDGE Rashan Gary (knee) to play big roles on Sunday’s game despite injury limitations, which may be difficult for each veteran based on what their bodies can do and where each player is within their recovery timeline.

If I had to guess, I expect one of the Packers’ 2nd year WRs to make it to gameday (likely Doubs, as his hamstring injury occurred before Green Bay’s 3rd preseason game), but the absence of even one 2nd year WR puts tremendous pressure on the Packers’ rookies to carry the offensive load on Sunday. And, as we’ve learned, featuring rookies can be a scary prospect.

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