The Bears don’t seem to have learned much in a season full of hard lessons. If anything, they’re making worse mistakes than ever.
Poor clock management flared up yet again Thursday in the Bears’ 6-3 loss to the Seahawks, and quarterback Caleb Williams and interim coach Thomas Brown threw away their shot to at least force overtime. It was their 10th consecutive loss, the second-longest streak in franchise history.
All the while, fans at Soldier Field shouted as loud as they could to send a message to chairman George McCaskey. They chanted, “Sell the team,” in the fourth quarter and yelled it so vociferously that the Prime Video postgame show broadcasted it to a national audience.
The Bears scripted an ugly ending that was fitting for a rainy night of football that was hard to watch. It was painfully reminiscent of the disastrous end of the game against the Lions last month that cost former coach Matt Eberflus his job.
The Bears got the ball with 5:12 left at their 11-yard line trailing 6-3. There appeared to be little urgency as the Bears kept letting 25 to 35 seconds drain between plays.
When they ran aground at fourth-and-inches, backup left guard Jake Curhan committed a brutal false start as they were trying to go for it. That prompted Brown to send out kicker Cairo Santos, only to change his mind, burn a timeout and go for it on fourth-and-five.
“I wanted to be more aggressive,” Brown said of changing course.
They ultimately converted on Williams’ pass to DJ Moore and made it to first-and-10 at the Seahawks’ 40, just at the edge of where Brown could’ve considered a long-shot field goal. Williams threw incomplete on first down, then the Bears wasted another timeout to avoid a delay of game.
The Bears went for it on fourth-and-10 with 20 seconds left, and the Seahawks brought the house on a blitz. Safety Coby Bryant was in Williams’ face immediately. He flung the ball desperately into the middle of the field as he backpedaled. Riq Woolen outworked Keenan Allen for the ball and intercepted it, ending Williams’ rookie-record streak of 353 passes without throwing a pick.
Brown said the Bears would have needed to reach the 37-yard line to even try a field goal, though he bypassed a chance to get there with a run play on second or third down because he said the Seahawks’ defense presented an unfavorable formation for running the ball.
“It was chaotic the whole game, so that was on par for what was going on the whole game,” tight end Cole Kmet said of the final drive. “It seemed like we were going for the win there, which I’m totally fine with. At this point, nothing to lose. Just came up short. Again.”
Tons went wrong before that.
Williams didn’t crack 100 passing yards until the last few minutes and was 16-for-28 for 122 yards and a 53.0 passer rating. The Seahawks sacked him seven times, pushing his NFL-high total to 67. The record is 76.
The Bears punted on eight of their first nine possessions and managed only 179 yards. None of that was remarkable in this miserable season. It was the third game in which they scored fewer than 10 points and fourth in which they failed to reach 200 yards. They converted only 5 of 15 third downs.
It was Williams’ fifth game under 150 passing yards and sixth with a sub-70 passer rating.
Running back D’Andre Swift was the Bears’ most productive offensive player with only 53 rushing yards and 28 receiving yards.
“The offense didn’t play well — miscues, stupid sacks that I was taking. . . . I’ll take the heat for this one,” he said. “Some of the situations I put us in [were avoidable].”
Getting him on the right track is a two-sided issue for the Bears. While they’ve certainly failed him by entrusting him to incompetent coaches that they had to fire during the season and protecting him with a faulty offensive line, Williams also wasn’t as NFL-ready as he or anyone else predicted.
The shared blame between Williams and what the organization has surrounded him with was illustrated clearly in the first half.
Wide receivers Rome Odunze and Allen each dropped a pass on third down, and Williams’ most impressive pass of the night was called back on a holding penalty by Curhan. Williams rolled left on third-and-10 at the Seahawks’ 17-yard line and fired to Odunze on the run with a quick snap of his wrist.
But Williams also completed only 7 of 13 passes for 82 yards in the first half.
In reviewing his rookie season as a whole, Williams was frustrated with himself for not being “consistent throughout the season” and piling up losses that add up to a 4-12 record. He said he believes this ultimately will be good for him, but it’s difficult to see signs of that at the moment.