KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Strong practices against Caleb Williams, the Dolphins’ Tua Tagovailoa and the Bills’ Josh Allen had the Bears’ defense feeling good about itself.
“Our goal is to be top five in everything,” defensive tackle Andrew Billings said this week.
In the Bears’ 29-27 comeback victory Friday night against the Chiefs, Patrick Mahomes showed the opposing defense just how far it has to go.
Mahomes threw for 143 yards, his most in a preseason game in three years. He led the Chiefs to two touchdowns and a field goal in his three possessions. The Chiefs totaled 231 yards in 21 plays with Mahomes on the field, an average of 11 yards per play. They had a whopping 13 first downs.
Mahomes went 8-for-13, threw a touchdown pass and had a 124.8 passer rating. There was nothing the Bears could do to slow him down.
“He did a great job of finding time and buying time and making plays,” safety Kevin Byard said. “It just wasn’t up to our standard at all. When you talk about the big plays, we just didn’t make him earn anything at all.”
Try as they might, the Bears couldn’t have replicated that sort of dominance in practice — or even in joint practices against the Dolphins and Bills. This was the kind of butt-kicking that happens when you don’t have the luxury of jogging off to the next drill.
The Bears’ starters faced Tagovailoa and Allen in practice. They sat out the opener, however, and got three whole downs against the Bills’ Mike White — who has nine TD passes and 13 interceptions in his career — before sitting down last week. So this was the Bears’ biggest test — and it didn’t go well. Slippery as ever, Mahomes proved hard to sack and impossible to tame. In practice, of course, quarterbacks aren’t allowed to get sacked.
The Bears don’t have to face Mahomes the rest of the year, but the quarterbacks on their schedule look a lot closer to the Chiefs star than they do, say, White. The Bears will face Jared Goff, Dak Prescott, Jayden Daniels, Lamar Jackson and Joe Burrow before Week 10.
Bears fans don’t have to think far back to remember a defense that predicted great things for itself. That happened at this time last year, when Matt Eberflus seemed to be a better defensive coordinator than he was a head coach. The Bears marched to an undefeated preseason and predicted a return to their defense-first ways.
“We’re going to be a top-five defense,” safety Jaquan Brisker said on the eve of last season. “And we expect that this year.”
The Bears wound up giving up 5.9 yards per play, second-most in the NFL behind the Panthers, last year. Only two teams gave up more rushing yards than their 4.8 per attempt and only two teams gave up more net yards per pass than the Bears’ 6.8.
Dennis Allen was brought in to change that. Rather than playing the traditional Tampa 2 of Eberflus and Lovie Smith, the former Saints and Raiders head coach preached a physical man defense. Like Eberflus, though, he’ll probably have to manufacture pressure by blitzing Brisker and slot cornerback Kyler Gordon.
“It doesn’t matter where we are in the game situationally,” Billings said. “If pressure makes sense, we are going to bring it.”
Exactly one week earlier, the Bears were proud of how physical they played against the Bills and Allen in the joint practice. The Bears had six takeaways during the practice, a repeat performance of the week before when they forced three interceptions by Tagovailoa after he’d failed to throw one all camp.
Allen, the reigning MVP, was a good test for the Bears. They passed it.
“The No. 1 thing is that we belonged on that field with those guys,” Dennis Allen said.
On this night, he couldn’t say the same about the Bears against Mahomes.
