Doomed by problems coach Ben Johnson was hired to solve, Bears lose 30-16 to Ravens

BALTIMORE — Take away the Ravens’ mystique and prestige, and this should’ve been a challenge the Bears could manage, even on the road: beat a team that has allowed more points than anyone in the NFL and is down to its third option at quarterback.

Yet they looked inept and clumsy Sunday, and coach Ben Johnson had no solutions as they sputtered to a 30-16 loss at M&T Bank Stadium to a Ravens’ team that’s only victory had come against the lowly Browns. They’ve been reeling defensively and, because of quarterback Lamar Jackson’s injury, turned to Tyler Huntley to save their season.

But really, it was the Bears who did that for them. Between quarterback Caleb Williams’ unsteadiness and poor decisions and the defenses’ lapses, they wasted a prime opportunity. These are the types of defeats that signal you should not be taken seriously.

The problems that sunk the Bears are precisely the ones Johnson was hired to fix.

The various injuries in the secondary aren’t an excuse, especially when the opponent is missing its two-time MVP quarterback, and neither is Williams’ inexperience.

While there is a reasonable acclimation period for a new coach-quarterback pairing, the Bears should be just about to the end of that as they near the halfway point of the season. And Williams compounded his pedestrian game — 25-for-38 passing, 285 yards, an interception, no touchdowns, 77.2 passer rating — with brutal mental mistakes.

His most egregious errors were squandering the Bears’ last realistic chance by throwing an interception deep in his own territory in the fourth quarter down 16-13 with nine minutes left and committing an intentional-grounding penalty shortly before halftime.

Those two slips effectively resulted in a 10-point hit for the Bears. The Ravens quickly turned the interception into a touchdown to put the game away, and the intentional grounding forced Johnson to burn his last timeout and opt for Cairo Santos to kick a hurry-up, 58-yard field goal, which fell short, heading into halftime.

But the check-engine light was on by the end of the first quarter, when the Bears had run 22 plays to the Ravens’ three, gotten inside the Baltimore 25-yard line twice and led just 6-0.

Waiting for the defense to get takeaways isn’t a plan, and neither is waiting for Williams to turn into Patrick Mahomes, or even Jared Goff.

It’s imperative that Johnson intervene on both sides of the ball. At this stage of the season, he has no choice but to tailor his game plan to what Williams and this offense can manage. And he’s not a defensive-minded coach, but that responsibility comes with the head job and needed his attention as Huntley put up one of the best games of his career.