Bear Digest

Bears Defense Scrambling for Answers After Collapsing in Key Moments

Cornerback Jaylon Johnson expresses frustration about Minnesota and Green Bay making critical scoring drives to pull out close wins.

Gene Chamberlain

T.J. Hockenson makes a key reception despite Bears coverage from Tremaine Edmunds in Minnesota's 30-27 overtime win.
T.J. Hockenson makes a key reception despite Bears coverage from Tremaine Edmunds in Minnesota's 30-27 overtime win. / Daniel Bartel-Imagn Images
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Not exactly one to cover things up, Bears cornerback Jaylon Johnson still refused Monday to throw anyone under the bus for the team's fifth straight loss.

A game coming up too soon made it a rather inconvenient time for such things, but it’s evident the standout Bears cornerback has extreme frustration over the defense’s inability to close out a game after they failed at it again in Sunday’s 30-27 overtime loss to Minnesota.

“It's just unfortunate,” Johnson said of the team’s 4-7 plight. “I don't have too many more thoughts.

“There's not too many new thoughts, not too much to think about. At the end of the day, we don’t find ways to win. So, that’s it.”

Johnson has been with the team since 2020, made the Pro Bowl and on Sunday was key in holding receiver Justin Jefferson to two catches for 27 yards. That wasn’t enough to get a smile out of him.

“Nobody walks around, well, I don’t walk around with a smile on my face,” he said. “There ain’t nuthin’ to be happy about.

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“So, I mean, obviously my frustration is at a high. Everybody’s frustration is at a high.”

Failing to back up rookie quarterback Caleb Williams the last two weeks when he had had nearly a 100 passer rating is particularly aggravating for the defense heading into a Thanksgiving Day game at division-leading Detroit (10-1) for the 4-7 Bears.

They’d like to see Williams blossoming as a reason for plenty of positive energy, but really can’t.

"I mean at the end of the day, he can't win the damn game by himself,” Johnson said. “So, it's not about Caleb. It's not, I mean, of course, we need and want him to play good. We need and want everybody to play good.

“So him having a good performance for two weeks straight doesn't give me hope for the future because we all got to win. It takes all 11 guys on the field to win."

The big problems on defense have simply been stopping key plays. There hasn't been a total cave-in.

The Vikings converted third-and-10 on their game-winning overtime drive, third-and-13 and third-and-12 on their final scoring drive of regulation.

The Bears had been the league’s best third-down defense before facing Green Bay on Nov. 17. Now they are seventh after two tough losses.

“It’s not a mentality, it’s just execution,” Johnson said. “At the end of the day we’ve got to find ways to get put in the right position and then ways to execute.

“So, I know for me and myself too we had a bang-bang play, I missed a third down that could have got us off the field. Stuff like that. I mean, there’s nothing, that’s not a mindset, that’s not anything else outside of simply not getting the ball out. So, I mean for different reasons we’ve found ways to not execute when it counts and I mean we’ve just got to figure out a way, whether it’s physically, mentally, whatever it is. We’ve got to get put in the right position but we’ve got to execute.”

Coach Matt Eberflus sees a defense now not only out of the top 10 but out of the top half of the league in yards allowed (17th), and labels it a group issue rather than individual players.

“I would just say that we need to tighten up on the details and do things better,” Eberflus said. “There’s not a magic pill there. There never is.

“It’s just about tightening things up and doing it better. As a group – coaches, players, all of us together. And if we do that, we’ll be OK.”

The defense’s slippage is possibly the biggest indictment of Eberflus’ coaching because he’s in charge of the defensive calls even if he does have a defensive coordinator in Eric Washington.

“I would say that we’ve played well at times this year, for sure,” Eberflus said. “You can look at the numbers. We’ve played well. On third down, QBR, red zone–we’ve played really well in a lot of areas.

“All I’m gonna say is we need to tighten it up, bring it together and the only way to do that is coming together. And we just got to do it better.”

Kevin Byard had coverage one on one with Jordan Addison on the third-and-10 conversion in overtime that sparked the winning drive. He was playing too far off at the snap.

“I think we called a timeout before that one, I believe on that one,” Eberflus said. “And we were set up and … we called a defense that we like on that particular situation.

“With that we just got to get down a little bit tighter on that in terms of where our alignments are. We gotta affect them more with the rush on that one, too. Again, it’s about being in position, making good plays. It was one of our main calls that we always call.”

The third-and-13 short pass to Aaron Jones that was run for a first down wasn’t a matter of players being positioned wrong. The Vikings set it up so there was blocking downfield after the catch to give Jones a chance to run upfield. In other words, the Bears didn’t rally to the ball the way Eberflus’ defensive coaching demands.

"You got to get off blocks,” Eberflus said. “It was pretty much a designed screen play and we didn't get off blocks and hit him early enough.”

Asked flat out if it was a case of coaches not putting them in the right place, Johnson was a little more definitive.

'"Again, never perfect, I mean there’s times we can get put in better positions at certain times of the game but I mean for the most part it’s on us to execute," he said.

Perhaps the Bears defense never was as good as they liked to believe. Their run in the second half of last season came against some of the easier offenses to face on their schedule. This season they were 4-2 but beat Carolina, Tennesee, Jacksonville and the Rams before the current five-game slide.

"I would honestly say it starts with the up-front in the run," Johnson said. "I feel like we've been giving up a lot of run yards and then I feel like explosive plays really been killing us.

I think overall, outside of that, we're good. Third down we're good, in red zone. I think just those two things have held us back from being who we know we can be."

Again, Johnson didn’t want to blame coaching, but had a qualifier in expressing his frustration

“So, I mean for different reasons we’ve found ways to not execute when it counts and I mean we’ve just got to figure out a way, whether it’s physically, mentally, whatever it is,” Johnson said. “We’ve got to get put in the right position, but we’ve got to execute.”

And it’s the coaches who need to put them in the right position.

Twitter: BearsOnSI

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

BearDigest.com publisher Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.