A brutal Chicago Bears loss left the team reeling and the fanbase far from entertained. 5-4 after falling to the Tennessee Titans 24-17, the Bears season started rocky but with promise and now is just on the rocks. Switching to Nick Foles was supposed to stabilize the play at quarterback. Well, it has. But the level of play has been as bad as feared when they inexplicably traded for the veteran.
Are You Not Entertained, Chicago Bears Fans?
The Blame Game
Foles isn’t the only issue. But he is the culmination of every bad decision made by this regime. For all the credit they deserve for maintaining the rich defensive history of Chicago, they need to be equally condemned for failing to build the offense. That was, after all, why they were hired. But it has been once out of sync move after another in building this team and now it looks like the disaster it is.
That scene in Gladiator was powerful. It was telling of human nature, that we are fine with less than ideal results (in the movie is was the continued fighting of slaves for entertainment) as long as we get some sort of visual display worth celebrating. Sadly, unlike its cinematic comp, this Bears team is not entertaining anyone.
You’ve seen all the metrics. The Bears rank 28th in scoring, 31st on third downs, and 30th in the red zone. They are 27th in DVOA (25th in passing, 30th in rushing), per Football Outsiders. They were fraudulent at 5-1 for these very reasons. Now, sitting at 5-4 in the midst of a three-game skid, their reality is catching up to them.
Six In One Hand
Quarterback, offensive line, coaching. No matter what you blame Chicago’s current state on, you’re probably right. Neither Nick Foles nor Mitchell Trubisky has proven to be the answer under center. Matt Nagy pulled the plug (perhaps prematurely) on Ryan Pace’s hand-picked passer in favor of his own and both have made their biggest backers look bad.
Trubisky has never sustained the traits he has flashed that enamored Ryan Pace. Foles hasn’t steadied the offense with his veteran savvy and understanding of the offense like Matt Nagy hoped.
Chicago’s lack of additions on the offensive line is concerning considering at their peak they were just ‘ok’. Adding talent to the group should have been an underlying goal of every offseason since (and really before) Trubisky was drafted back in 2017. It’s no surprise that the two best linemen on the Bears, Cody Whitehair and James Daniels, were drafted in the second round, the only two such picks in Ryan Pace’s tenure. Hroniss Grasu is the only other lineman picked before the fifth round (Jordan Morgan).
This is one area where Pace has failed to unearth any late-round gems. It’s also where Nagy has failed to “coach them up”
The Bears don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. Teams all across the NFL are shuffling personnel in and out of their lineups on a weekly basis and remaining competitive. The Dallas Cowboys put a mighty scare into the Pittsburgh Steelers, one of the best defenses in the NFL, with Garrett Gilbert at the helm. Jake Luton had the Jacksonville Jaguars competitive in his first NFL start against the Houston Texans. The Bears could muster just three points until garbage time against one of the worst defenses.
Time is a Flat Circle
It’s become a nauseating refrain, but the Bears offense is wasting another strong effort by their defense. We see it every week. Save for a big play here or there (Sunday it was A.J. Brown’s 40-yard grab in Buster Skrine’s coverage), they have kept this team in games far beyond its shelf life. 17 points (one of Tennessee’s scores was a fumble recovery) should be reasonable for an offense to overcome. But the Bears have scored fewer than 17 points 13 times in three seasons under Nagy with eight such occurrences last season.
They are 5-8 in those games.
Defense is the hardest thing to predict year-to-year. So in that regard, the Bears have broken the trend. But there is another trend developing under the Pace-Nagy regime that is disturbing. Chicago’s defense ranked first in points and third in yards when Nagy was hired. Pace, to his credit, had resuscitated what was an afterthought by the previous leadership. But they have regressed in each subsequent year, falling to fourth in points and eighth in yards in 2019 and, so far in 2020, seventh in points and ninth in yards.
Meanwhile, the offense has ranked no better than 28th in points and 29th in yards the past two years.
Comparisons to Marc Trestman have cropped up and won’t be going away anytime soon. For all the goodwill built up from the 2018 run, Nagy is now just as scrutinized. Pace was bold for his decision to trade up for Trubisky. Even if most didn’t like the prospect. Now, both will have a hard time fighting off labels of trying to be the smartest guy in the room. In a sport that often comes down to executing the fundamentals better than your opponent, it has become clear the Bears brain trust is more likely to out-think themselves.
Bears Fans Are Not Entertained
There are still seven games left. And the Bears aren’t “out of it”. But goodness is that window slamming shut with few signs of relief ahead. They host (the league’s leading rusher) Dalvin Cook and the Minnesota Vikings, winners of two straight and three of their last four, in Week 10. They held Derrick Henry (second in rushing yards) to 68 scoreless yards on 21 carries. It clearly didn’t sway the outcome but that was a major concern coming into the contest.
A bigger concern is what will become of this season.
The Bears have their bye after Week 10 and come out to face the Green Bay Packers in Week 11. Then they face the Detroit Lions for the second time, the Houston Texans, and travel to Minnesota before closing out with the Jacksonville Jaguars (fitting) and Packers. At one point, fans might have been inclined to chalk up the Vikings games as wins. Can’t be so sure now. That obviously applies to the Lions on a lesser scale. Houston and, yes, even Jacksonville won’t be pushovers.
We don’t even have to talk about the challenges the Packers and Aaron Rodgers have always presented.
The media has repeatedly said things can be salvaged. Nagy hasn’t lost the team. That’s an interesting stance to take and is likely from those who haven’t watched this debacle week in and week out. If they had, they would know there is no separating any of the dysfunction. It’s all intertwined. Pace drafted Kevin White, Leonard Floyd, and Trubisky in the first round and hired Nagy. Nagy refuses to adjust his scheme to the strength of his players or hand off play-calling. These players aren’t executing. Blown assignments or penalties, it’s all bad.
So, are you not entertained?
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