Facing the Music for Tashaun Gipson, Defense

Secondary members absorbing blame for easy Rams touchdowns, vow silly mistakes won't happen again.

The Bears defense thought Sunday night was pretty hard.

Then came Tuesday.  

"Today was the hard day," safety Tashaun Gipson said Tuesday at Halas Hall. "You have to go up there and see your mistakes on tape in front of everybody."

They don't burn the tape this early in a season because teams are going to copy what the Rams did against the Bears secondary and try to torch them in a similar fashion. 

They need to correct the situation. 

"You learn from it and you get better," Gipson said. 

Losing 34-14 and giving up 56-yard and 67-yard touchdown pass plays can be deflating to a defense. 

Because it was the first game for defensive coordinator Sean Desai, it would have been easy to indict his lack of experience. Gipson would have none of that.

"There's not going to be a game where you call the perfect plays for every situation," Gipson said. "But I think Sean put us in the best situations for consistently most of the game. 

"A lot of the things that you seen were mental or technique errors, things that you could fix. Nothing to be too concerned about. But obviously, there was some calls that we have to take advantage of the opportunities when he calls those plays. I didn't see any panic from Sean or anything like that. Obviously, I'm not on the headset like Roquan (Smith), so Roquan can probably give you a better answer to that one."

The secondary apparently absorbed the beating.

"We didn't do our job on the back end and we gave up plays that we shouldn't have and that cost us the game," Gipson said. "The film session was a bit hard but that's what it's expected to be. We have tough skin, you get paid a lot of money. You have to be able to be coachable. He coached us hard it was just one of those type of days."

Em-bear-assing

Gipson was involved in the most embarrassing play. After Van Jefferson caught a long pass and fell to the ground inside the 15-yard line, neither Gipson nor safety Eddie Jackson touched Jefferson down. He got up and merely ran in to complete a 67-yard TD play.

Bears coach Matt Nagy on Monday said they may have "non-chalanted" the attempt to touch Johnson down and whiffed on it.

"It was one of those plays where in my 10-year career I don't think I've been a part of," Gipson said. "If you play that play between me and Eddie, 10 times out of 10 one of us would tag him down; too much football IQ between the two of us to let a play like that happen. 

"So obviously it's just one of those things that will keep you up at night."

Gipson called the play a momentum changer.

"Just like a turnover in the red zone changed the momentum for them, who knows what that could have done for us," he said. "Obviously that's tough, something as simple as touching a guy down. They teach you that in little league."

Gipson took responsibility for a 56-yard TD Cooper Kupp scored when he got behind the secondary and no one was within 10 yards of him. It's possible Gipson was simply being the responsible veteran standing up for the group or slot cornerback Marqui Christian, who had let Kupp go. On game film, it looks as if Christian expected deep help on the coverage, but the Bears won't discuss details of this gaffe.

"It was a brain fart on the secondary, myself included," Gipson said. "I take ownership on that play. We've all got to be on the same page, myself, all of us. But I take ownership on that play."

Possible Explanations

Gipson offered up a few reasons why these type of mental mistakes could happen, and they didn't involve the coaching staff.

"I think Week 1 in the NFL is always that kind of jitters," he said. "We could say a lot of things. There was a lot of uncharacteristic football around the league. We're human."

Another was lost time together in training camp, although this seemed to get fixed. Both Gipson and Jackson were on the sidelines watching through injuries initially but were back at practice one month before the game. 

With two new starting cornerbacks in Christian and Kindle Vildor, the Bears needed their group together as much as possible in camp to improve communication between players. Also, Christian hadn't even been the slot cornerback when preseason ended. He was cut, then brought back and played in nickel coverage while previous starter Duke Shelley was inactive.

"It wasn't that their players were better than us and making contested catches," Gipson said. "You can live with those. The blown coverages, we just didn't give ourselves a chance and that's the most disappointing part about it because you understand that those guys get paid just like we do. But a high school player could have ran scot-free open and caught passes like that."

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