Bear Digest

How Bears Pull It Together After Toughest Loss Since Double-Doink

Analysis: A true disaster like Sunday's Hail Mary defeat can send teams into tailspins and Bears coach Matt Eberflus has thoughts on why it happened and how to prevent it again

Gene Chamberlain

Kiran Amegadjie gets beat on a pass block and Caleb Williams is hit as he throws in Sunday's 18-15 loss to the Commanders.
Kiran Amegadjie gets beat on a pass block and Caleb Williams is hit as he throws in Sunday's 18-15 loss to the Commanders. / Geoff Burke-Imagn Images
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After that disaster, where do the Bears go from here?

The short answer is Arizona.

The NFL has games end in catastrophes or tremendous successes every week. They might not have all the drama of a Hail Mary but they're losses nonetheless.

Coach Matt Eberflus was asked after the game how they keep from letting something like this ruin their entire season.

"Our guys believe in each other, trust in each other, have faith in each other," Eberflus told reporters. "They're a resilient bunch. You know, they're going to come back more determined.

"Again, the game didn't go the way we wanted it to at certain points. But again, at the end, we got it going in our direction and, you know, to be able to have a chance to win it and, you know, did everything we could at the very end. We just got to execute better."

They didn't do everything they could at the end or they would have won, and pushing this off by saying it went how they wanted it to at certain points would have been like Mrs. Lincoln saying the play was delightful except for when everyone had to go home early.

This was a disaster and even if bad losses happen every week in the NFL, it takes more than quickly brushing it aside to move on to play Arizona.

The goal has to be to make sure they don't get in such situations again, and then if they do to have the answer that difficult chore of knowing how they defend 65 yards in six seconds when the opponent has no timeouts.

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The way to avoid being in the situation is to get their offense started sooner.

Eberflus' idea of where they had issues Sunday reflected on quarterback Caleb Williams more than it did offensive coordinator Shane Waldron.

"Sometimes, when you have those days, you just got to make sure you keep finding answers," Eberflus said.

The problem is "those days" has happened every week so far. All seven games involved slower starts to one extent or another.

"You know, some of the answers could have been, you know, getting the ball to our tight ends and running backs," Eberflus said.

This is Williams' responsibility, to make sure where the ball is distributed. Waldron can only come up with plays.

"As I look at the stat sheet, you know, there and then we were trying to do that," Eberflus said.

Williams targeted tight end Cole Kmet once, tight end Gerald Everett twice and did not throw to D'Andre Swift, who has been one of their best threats against defensive pressure on screen passes. Their four wide receivers were targeted 18 times. So they did not really try to do this even though he said they did, unless Williams was changing plays.

"You know, they did pressure with their linebackers," Eberflus said. "We knew they were going to do some of those.

"We thought those, you know, those were effective for them. So we got to do a better job handling those. But again, it's always about just working to the next series and finding answers and we got to do a better job of that."

Williams had handled blitzes well the previous three games. The end result of the pressure from linebackers blitzing was not the calm, composed Williams the Bears saw in their wins over the Rams, Panthers and Jaguars. He was more like in Weeks 1-3.

"You know, again, the progressions, you know, I thought progressions, I thought, you know, got off him a little bit," Eberflus said. "I have to look at it."

In other words, Williams got disrupted from looking through his progression of targets

"But again, the rhythm and timing that we've seen over the last couple weeks, you know, just, you know, again, it could be guys that were covered or he got, you know, pressure in his face, whatever that might be," Eberflus said. "But again, that's everybody. I think, you know, that's a protection thing, that's a route-running thing, and that's a quarterback thing."

Of course, he didn't say it was a coaching thing, which seemed to be what the goal-line play with a fumble by Doug Kramer was.

"No it's a play we worked," Eberflus insisted. "We've worked that play since he's been in there and we've worked it, worked the mechanics of it, you know, the handoff to him, and we just got to do it better."

The idea of giving it to a lineman with the game on the line in the fourth quarter is what doesn't seem sound.

"It's just, you know, wedge blocking and you're on the 1-yard line," Eberflus said. "You got a big guy getting the ball. And so we we've practiced it a lot.

"It's a 1-yard play. And we felt that a big guy like that taking a dive could do that."

A problem on defense beyond the obvious final play was dealing with the running of quarterback Jayden Daniels. It's an issue because Kyler Murray this Sunday has a very similar skill set, although they did give up only a 33% third-down percentage, solid for facing a scrambling quarterback.

"He's a tough contain, you know, so we got to do a really good job of that," Eberflus said. "And you know, we did it with four (against Daniels), we did it with five (rushers). We did it, you know, with, you know, four off of one side, you know, three off of one side, two on the other. So we, we did that to some success.

"And I thought we really did a good job on, you know, in the second-half and the third downs, you know, we're pretty good on the, in the first half, on third downs as well, getting ourselves out of those drives."

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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.