If I can sum up Thursday night’s Bears performance in one sentence, keeping it PG friendly for some reason, it’s this: The Bears aren’t good enough to waste 3 opportunities within the 10 yard, and come away with 0 points, period. Of course, there’s more to all of this…
The first one was a Fields mistake. Yes, I know it was fluky… a thrown ball off a D-lineman’s helmet, up in the air, into the belly of another D-lineman. Still… in the Red Zone, Justin must learn to take extreme care of that ball. No trying to squeeze it into tight spots, at least not yet. Worst case, absolute worst case, we’re coming away with 3 there; can’t get none. The second one was on the coach IMO. I like the fact that we went for it on 4th down; no guts no glory. I like the fact that we ran the ball; if you as an NFL team cannot get 1 yard, you suck. However… if the Bears, this team, needs one yard, who should have the ball? If you answered Fields, I can’t be mad at that; he powered for a couple earlier in the game. If you said Herbert, you’re wrong; love Khalil, don’t get me wrong, but for 1 yard… it’s David Montgomery. Where was he? Is he still not 100%? He should have been getting that one yard. The final time was at the end of the game. It was different from the first two chances because of the fact we needed a TD, but the fact remains; we needed to get in, and we didn’t. By the way, if someone (Mooney) wants to be a #1 WR, he needs to catch that ball… Speaking about catching the ball… another muffed punt???
Digging a little further on the final drive… Not sure why after Fields got the long run, setting us up for the winning score, we didn’t run the ball. Yes, I know we didn’t have any timeouts, but there was what, 40 seconds or so. You’re telling me a run, even if we got stopped inbounds, would take up all of that time? No. Plus, we were having success running outside the tackles, which would provide an opportunity to run out of bounds if need be. Still, I think with 1-2 runs in that spot, we may have gotten in. At the very least, rollout our most talented guy, Fields, and let him make a play with either his arm or legs. What do I know… I do know the play calling needs to adjust on a weekly basis. Not only that, it should adjust IN GAME. Now I know we’ve been better at that, proven by the 2 Ws we do have, trailing in all 6 games at the half thus far. Still, I want more. If a team’s D-Line is killing us, like was the case in this one, do something to alleviate that. Running outside the tackles, rolling Fields out, misdirection, etc… something… Fields took an absolute beating in this one. I’m sure there’d be no pain if we could have pulled it out.
Still, I’m not devastated; I’m trying to keep things in perspective. Yes, this was a game the Bears shoulda, woulda, coulda won; we definitely missed one. And yes, now I want to get one of the opposite variety, with us pulling out a W in a game we should have lost to make up for it. Maybe that’s next week? Still, I want to see wins, and not only because I bet on the over for the 6.5 win total for the year. Winning helps the culture Eberflus is trying to establish here; more talent would too, but you know… You can’t just play hard and lose every fricking week. We get a bunch of time until we take the field again. The Patriots aren’t the Patriots of old any more… but, why don’t they wear those throwbacks again next Monday night and have the Bears repeat what happened the most famous time they wore them? Keep your heads up… Bear Down!
Leave a Reply