Bear Digest

Bears Offense a Mere Rumor in Embarrassing 6-3 Loss to Seahawks

Final minutes turn into a clownish series of mistakes as Chicago loses its 10th straight and doesn't score a touchdown.

Gene Chamberlain

Caleb Williams on 6-3 Bears Loss to Seahawks.mp4
Caleb Williams on 6-3 Bears Loss to Seahawks.mp4 /
In this story:

Like in so many other games this year, the Bears looked chaotic in their home finale when it counted most, wasted great plays by committing dumb mistakes and had no concept of time.

In the end, they finally got their defense back and playing like earlier in the season but it didn't do much good against Seattle as they lost 6-3 Thursday night in a completely miserable offensive performance.

It doesn't matter who coaches the Bears or what they do, they still bumble, stumble and lose in the end. It all inspired chants of "sell the team, sell the team," directed at owner George McCaskey.

"At the end of the day we're trying to win ballgames," safety Kevin Byard said. "No real moral victories. We still lost 10 in a row.

"I guess we should have held them to three points or zero points at the end of the day."

The defense had done its part for three weeks to squander games. Perhaps the offense felt left out, but they made up for it all in a few minutes at the end of Thursday's game.

They took over at their 11 with 5:12 left and all their timeouts, overcame a Jake Curhan false start on fourth-and-1 at their 39 with Caleb Williams' miraculous throw on the run back across the field to leaping DJ Moore for 14 yards, then got to the edge of field goal range at Seattle's 40 with 37 seconds left and no closer.

Three straight Williams incompletions and then a Riq Woolen interception of a desperation throw with the blitz bearing down ended the game and also Williams' streak of 353 straight passes without an interception.

"I didn't play well enough," Williams said. "I didn't help put the team in a good position to win, a better position to win and that's what it is.

"I think today was one of those games I think we played on two sides of the ball pretty well, on special teams and defense. On offense we didn't play well. There was miscues, there was stupid sacks that I was taking, losing 10, 14 yards, which is frustrating. But I will say that I'll definitely take the heat for this one because some of the situations I put us in."

Williams completed 16 of 28 for 122 yards and absorbed seven sacks for 46 yards in losses for a 53.0 passer rating.

He said he got hit in the throat and face on the final drive after completing a third-and-14 pass to Rome Odunze for 15 yards. When he did it, 38 seconds ran off the clock before they got the next play off, a short incompletion. Then they wasted a timeout in a dead-ball situation before the second-down snap when there was confusion over the play call.

"So I didn't want to waste plays, to have a timeout from a delay-of-game standpoint," interim head coach Thomas Brown said. "That was the whole reason for burning the timeout."

The three straight incompletions and interception followed. They could have tried a 58-yard field goal, which would have been a career long for Cairo Santos, but the longest of long shots considering the cold and damp weather.

The real clownish situation occurred with 2:14 left on fourth-and-1, when Curhan got the false start. First Brown sent his punt team out, then called timeout, then sent the offense back on the field for the miracle throw and leaping catch Moore made.

It turned out all right on that play but they spent a timeout during a dead ball.

"I'm sure we were, to me, in my head, I was just 'we'll just go for the win,'" tight end Cole Kmet said. "To be honest, to tie it up based on how we were going offensively, like, I totally understand (going for) it at that point.

"Just trying to go get a win there and obviously we couldn't get it done."

All they could get done on the night was a 42-yard field goal by Cairo Santos 2:32 before halftime. Seattle had a 27-yard Jason Myers field goal on its first possession and then a 50 yarder with 21 seconds left before halftime.

The defense held Seattle, which still has playoff aspirations, to 265 yards and nearly won the game themselves. Kyler Gordon stripped the football from Pharaoh Brown and took it back 62 yards for a TD in the late third quarter, but officials ruled he made contact with Brown and was ruled down on the spot after the recovery.

The Bears offensecould manage only 179 yards of offense, although they did also get to the end zone. A penalty also ruined their TD as Jake Curhan was detected holding on a 17-yard Williams TD throw to Rome Odunze just before Santos' field goal.

As bad as the 179 yards sounds, it wasn't even in their worst three offensive performances of the season.

They still have one more in Green Bay to endure. Whether they use Williams hasn't been said but it seemed after the game like they might.

Williams has endured 67 sacks on the season after Thursday's seven-sack beating. That's more sacks than the Bears as a team have given up in any other season, and he took all of them himself.

"I think any time you take multiple hits throughout a season or throughout a game, I mean, they add up," Williams said. "Obviously, just as anybody, if you get hit more often, more often than not you start to feel those a little bit more. Recovery and things like that are really important."

Now 4-12 and with 10 straight losses, the Bears' only goal should be to finish in Green Bay without getting anyone hurt, including Williams.

"Tough to see it end like this for being at Soldier, yeah, just tough overall," Kmet said about the home finale. "Definitely not the season we envisioned coming in here."

Not even close.

Twitter: BearsOnSI

Published |Modified
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.