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!
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.
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.
Robert Altman’s Kansas City (1996)
Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears this Week?
I.
Always.
Like.
THE.
Chicago.
Bears.
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?
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…
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?
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.
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:
Check it out and let me know what you think!
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
In my 15 years as a Bears fan, I have seen the Chicago Bears sweep the Green Bay Packers once.
One single season. Across Fifteen years.
Since Aaron Rodgers took over at Quarterback, Green Bay has consistently throttled Chicago — the Packers have won a staggering 26 out of 31 contests and have left the Bears with a lower win percentage vs Green Bay in that span (16.12%) than Chicago finished with in a last-place 2022 season (17.65%).
As a matter of fact, Chicago enters this weekend’s game with two concurrent losing streaks against the Green Bay Packers:
Thus, if you’ve ever felt like Chicago simply couldn’t beat Aaron Rodgers, you were right.
But Chicago doesn’t face Aaron Rodgers this weekend.
After more than a decade of dominance, a new face now leads Green Bay. Jordan Love has taken the reigns at Quarterback, and he brings with him a wildly young offensive skill core with nothing to lose and everything to gain.
There are virtually no expectations for this Packers team, save that the young guns develop on offense, but that’s not to say they’re without talent — with high-pedigree draft picks like Christian Watson, Luke Musgrave, and Jayden Reed, the 2023 Packers are a dangerous team. But, as of the time of writing this article, they’re also as weak as they’re likely to be this year.
The Packers’ starting CB2, Eric Stokes, will open the 2023 season on the PUP list. Tyler Davis, GB’s veteran TE3, will start the season on IR and force rookie Luke Musgrave into a starting role early.
2nd year possession receiver Romeo Doubs tweaked his hamstring and missed the Packers’ final preseason game. Star EDGE rusher Rashan Gary tore his ACL in 2022’s Week 9 and, though he’s slated to play in Week 1, will assuredly lack some measure of explosion for at least a few more months.
This Packers team is young, untested, and banged up. If Chicago can’t beat them now, when will they?
