Bear Digest

What a Weekend Without Bears Football Taught Us in Week 17

Rookie quarterbacks elsewhere are stepping up when they've been properly supported but it would appear the Bears haven't quite accomplished this with Caleb Williams.

Gene Chamberlain

Jayden Daniels tries to elude tacklers at the the goal line in Sunday night's Washington win over Atlanta.
Jayden Daniels tries to elude tacklers at the the goal line in Sunday night's Washington win over Atlanta. / Amber Searls-Imagn Images
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Another weekend without Bears football said something about the team, just like it always does.

The biggest message communicated had something to do with the coaching hunt, of course.

They also learned something very obvious about the coaching staff responsible for this year's team, the GM who hired the head coach.

Of course, they learned about their situation in the 2025 NFL Draft.

Here's what was learned.

1. Bears-Packers Game Time

The NFL announced on Sunday that the season finale at Lambeau Field will kick off at noon. Might as well get it over with as early as possible.

There is also another twist to the game that didn't become evident until Sunday night after Washington won.

The Packers are seventh seeds now, so they are fighting for something in this final game. If they lose to the Bears, they get the seventh seed and play the loser of the Detroit-Minnesota game. If they win and the Commanders lose, they'll face the Eagles in rematch of their season opener except in the U.S. and not Brazil.

Not sure which is better, but the Packers haven't beaten any of those three teams this season so they'll probably be more focused on sharpening their team while winning.

2. Draft Tank Bumblers

Once the weekend's games ended, the Bears were right back where they had been in the draft process prior to this week. They had moved up to seventh momentarily but only because they did their part and lost on Thursday night to move up a few spots. Once the other tankers did their job, it was back to ninth again.

New "stuff" has come to light, to paraphrase wise man.

The Raiders don't seem to understand how this tanking thing for draft picks is played and neither do the Giants, of all people. The Giants scored a disastrous victory and dropped from the second spot in draft order to No. 4. The Raiders won their second straight and forged a five-way tie at 4-12 with the Bears, Jaguars, Panthers and Jets.

The Bears still lose tiebreakers with all of the teams they are tied with. It will take another loss by the Bears and a win by any of the other four teams for a change of positions because of that tiebreaker situation.

The Raiders are the only team in the tie with a tiebreaker close to the Bears but it's not close enough. Their opponents had a .544 winning percentage, the Bears' opponent .554 and low number wins the tiebreaker. One week in the NFL isn't going to make up that .010 difference in opposing winning percentage.

The teams in the tie with the best chance to win and let the Bears move up if they lose to Green Bay are the Jaguars, who play at Indianapolis, and the Jets, who host Miami.  The Raiders play the playoff-bound Chargers and Panthers face Atlanta, which must win to have a chance at the playoffs.

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There is the outside chance the Giants could lose their tiebreaker edge over the Bears because they're within .002 heading into the last game but a tie with the Bears would mean the Giant beat the Eagles. Good luck with that.

3. The Streakers

With 10 straight losses, the Bears now have the current longest losing streak in the NFL.

The defeat Thursday tied the Bears for the longest losing streak in the NFL this season at 10 games. They're tied with the Giants and Raiders, who ended their streaks.

So if they lose to the Packers, the Bear will have the longest losing streak in the 2024 NFL season at 11 straight. That's one more than they had in 2022, when they lost 10 straight, then went on to lose four more straight in 2023 to make it 14 in a row before beating Washington.

It's not quite a strong spot on GM Ryan Poles' resume.

4. Coaching Fiasco

If you watched the Commanders-Falcons Sunday night game, or the Broncos game Saturday with Cincinnati, you saw rookie quarterbacks handling close games and tight situations well.

You saw offenses well coordinated and with lines strong enough to give the rookie passers time to throw and running games strong enough to provide balance and take pressure off of the rookies.

In short, you saw three teams who developed Jayden Daniels, Bo Nix and now Michael Penix. Daniels and Penix were able to lead teams in pressure situations up and down the field without looking ridiculous because they have been developed by competent offensive coordinators, head coaches and quarterback coaches.

Meanwhile, you have the No. 1 pick in the draft getting hit hard repeatedly, facing constant pressure, backed by a running game that failed to get over 84 yards rushing in a game nine times this year, armed with a game plan that averages a point a game in first quarters and has let them fall behind 15 out of 16 games.

The coaching staff that did this is still in place except for the head coach and offensive coordinator, and the head coach was hired by the current general manager.

They're ruining another perfectly good quarterback who has shown in spurts he can play every bit as good as these other rookie QBs if given the chance. They haven't helped him.

5. Coaching Hunt

Maybe Kliff Kingsbury appears over this habit he has had of fading down the stretch every single year. Of course, he did that when he was head coach at Arizona and Texas Tech and as offensive coordinator it seems it's not happening. It might be different if he was head coach and not just the coordinator. There's no way to know.

Should the Bears be interested in hiring him? Jayden Daniels and Kyler Murray are examples he can develop a QB and even if he isn't the perfect candidate it might take a head coach with the ability to develop a QB now like Kingsbury apparently can in order to clean up the mess coaches have made of Williams this year.

The other developments: Joe Brady and Liam Coen keep right on producing points. That was 48 by Coen's Buccaneers after his third-ranked offense had struggled a bit in losing to Dallas last week.

They're back in the division lead now and possibly headed for the playoffs.

As for Brady, his second-ranked scoring offense in Buffalo cooked up another 40-burger to beat the Jets. It was their third 40-point game in the last four games.

Two more offensive side coaches the Bears need to be talking about.

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.