Bear Digest

No Rhyme or Reason to Bears Two-Minute Drill or Their Season

Analysis: The Bears' last possession typified their entire season with poor reasoning, decisions and execution as the offense bumbled away a chance to win in a 6-3 defeat.

Gene Chamberlain

DJ Moore acknowledges the fans as he leaves Soldier Field for the last time this season Thursday following a 6-3 loss.
DJ Moore acknowledges the fans as he leaves Soldier Field for the last time this season Thursday following a 6-3 loss. / Daniel Bartel-Imagn Images
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DJ Moore rarely overstates anything.

His understated description of the Bears' two-minute drill, or in this case five-minute drill, still adequately told the story of how the Bears' 6-3 loss ended. It looked more like a siege than a two-minute drill.

They got to the line of scrimmage during those final few moments with the clock stopped twice and still had to call timeouts, once after Jake Curhan false start and the other after an incomplete pass.

Confusion?

"I mean, there were some wrinkles in there," Moore said about the offensive play call before a timeout. "The one time that it went all the way down (on the play clock) and we really didn’t know what to do.

"But at the end of the day, shoot, that's on us. We've got to stay prepared throughout the whole game and I mean, that’s all I can say."

Actually, it wasn't, so Moore further explained what the issue was.

"No, it was a play in, but it was a lot of people in different spots," he said of the alignment. "So it was like, all right we need to really call this timeout."

There have been timeouts not called when there should have been, like just before the Hail Mary pass when Eberflus failed to get everyone organized so that Tyrique Stevenson wasn't cheerleading and could focus on his actual job.

There was the timeout Eberflus had in his back pocket just sitting there when the Detroit Debacle ended, along with his job.

It's easy to cite the coaches for all of this when it happens repeatedly and when the players look confused at the end of a game, whether it's on offense or defense. But it's gone on through two head coaches and two offensive play callers.

The Bears faced a fourth-and-1 at their own 39, then fourth-and-6 after Curhan's false start with 2:14 to play, and the confusion was replaced by indecision when interim coach Thomas Brown sent in the punt team, then had to call timeout and sent the offense back in. They got bailed out by Caleb Williams' miraculous 14-yard pass do DJ Moore.

"It wasn't confusion at all," Brown said. "I just changed my mind. I think being able to use Tory (Taylor) as a weapon, and we still had I think it was 2:16 (2:14) on the clock, still had our three timeouts, plus the two-minute warning.

"The way our defense had been playing all day, possibly have a chance to go flip the field and force the three-and-out, get a shorter field and have, like, a last end-of-the-game drive. That was my thought process. Over the course of that, I changed my mind and said, 'Let's go for it now,' and sent the offense back on the grass."

No one could fault his eventual aggressiveness if this is what you want to call it. The Bears had nothing to lose, anyway. But the lack of decisiveness is the real problem. It leads to confusion and later confusion reigned when Williams saw his offense all lined up wrong and confused.

Williams' 15-yard pass on third-and-14 to Rome Odunze got them to the Seattle 40, first and 10 with 31 seconds left. They somehow wasted 38 seconds from the start of that play until Williams thew an incompletion on the next play and then was forced to call timeout to avoid a delay of game with chaos reigning.

Facing first-and-10 at the 40 and needing only 5 yards to give Cairo Santos a decent shot at a tying field goal, the odds seemed to greatly favor the Bears after they had driven all the way from their own 11.

Never overestimate the Bears, though.

Seattle took to sending as much pressure as it could with blitzes and the Bears--Williams and his line--responded like they had never seen one. Total panic, errant throws deep. They were trying for the TD on those plays instead of looking for 5 to 10 yards to make sure they at least got the tying field goal attempt.

They could have simply run the ball a few plays to try to get the needed yardage for the field goal but according to Brown, there was simply no way to do it against Seattle's blitzes.

"Couple of things," Brown said. "Felt good about the runs. Still wanted to go for the win. But like I talked about before, not of a ton of great options of running the football versus zero coverage (and blitz). So felt better about throwing the football."

Obviously they may have felt better but they didn't call or execute better against it with the pass.

"I wasn't good enough," Brown said. "Put it on me."

That's fine. If a coach thinks a blitz is such an obstacle he should get blame. If it was so difficult to handle, how did they score 27 points against Minnesota's blitzes in Week 12 in a 30-27 loss?

Four straight plays and they had nothing to show for it from the Seattle 40, nothing to show for a game they easily and finally could have won.

It was an exasparating sequence.

The only thing positive to say about it all is there is only one more of these left to endure at Green Bay in a game that may not mean anything to either team.

The biggest challenge for the Packers, then, could be to keep from laughing at one of the league’s most inept franchises.

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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.