With just over two minutes gone in the 3rd quarter of Monday night’s game between the Chicago Bears and Minnesota Vikings, I had a far different expectation for what this column would be. Nahshon Wright had just taken an interception back for six, and defense to immediate offense, a Windy City staple, had given Chicago a 17-6 lead on a night that the best Bears defense of all-time was being honored.
In that very moment last night, it felt like there was an exciting realization of what was to come in 2025 and beyond. This is it. This is what we’ve been waiting for. It’s unfolding before our eyes. It was not too dissimilar to what it felt like in 2018, when Khalil Mack made a dominant debut that sparked a 20-0 lead early in the 3rd quarter versus the Green Bay Packers.
Unfortunately, this turned out to be a devastating omen.
Just as they did in 2018, the 2025 Bears surrendered their lead in the 4th quarter and ended up dropping to 0-1 to start the season courtesy of a gut-punch loss to a division foe. If you’re looking for a silver lining, that 2018 team did end up going 12-4 and winning the NFC North title. However, we all know how the 2018 season ended, don’t we?
Anyway, the many parallels to the 2018 team — right down to a second-year quarterback, a first-year head coach and the potential issues at kicker that submarined Chicago in the Wild Card Round that year — is just the first of five key takeaways from this Week 1 game.
Takeaway #2: Caleb Williams Flashes Improvement Under New Bears Coach Ben Johnson
By no means was it perfect, and given the amount of fireworks Ben Johnson was responsible for as the Detroit Lions offensive coordinator, it’s reasonable that many other fans and unbiased observers would have a different takeaway after a game in which the offense was responsible for only two touchdowns, but I was pretty pleased with what I saw out of Caleb Williams on Monday night.
Were there some throws that he sprayed? Yes there were, including a few on crucial downs late in the game when the Bears needed to move the chains. Were there some reads that he missed? Yes there were, and they likely prevented Chicago from one or two explosives that could’ve potentially led to a different result.
But my eye spied a young quarterback who was more confident and in greater command of the offense he’s operating than he was as a rookie, and hey, that’s progress. Sure, Caleb finished Week 1 with a league-worst 29.4% off-target throw rate, but had Chicago’s defense not surrendered 21 points in the 4th quarter, we’d be looking at and talking about this Caleb Williams performance a whole lot differently than we are right now.
Now I get that it’s the job of the franchise quarterback to win games almost entirely on his own, and Caleb didn’t do that on Monday night. In time, that needs to be the guy he becomes. But for right now, in just his 18th career NFL start, let’s just recognize that there was a noticeable difference between the guy he was last year and the guy he is right now.
Takeaway #3: What The Hell Was Up With The Run Game?
In Ben Johnson’s final season as the offensive coordinator of the Detroit Lions, his offense ranked 6th in the league in both total rushing yards and yards per rush attempt. Even with a running back room not nearly as dynamic as the one he had in Detroit, it was expected that Johnson would be able to scheme up a run game behind a revamped offensive line that would rank at least somewhere in the top half of the league.
On Monday night, however, the only success that Chicago had on the ground was when Caleb Williams was forced to abandon the pocket and use his legs to create plays, and credit to Caleb, he did that plenty. For the game, the second-year QB finished with 58 yards and a touchdown on just six carries. Conversely, D’Andre Swift and DJ Moore — the only other Bears with a carry in Week 1 — ran for only 61 yards on 20 combined carries, an average of barely 3 yards per rush.
You don’t need me to tell you that this isn’t going to cut it, especially when so much of the success of the passing attack in a Ben Johnson offense is dependent on how effectively his team is able to run the ball. Johnson utilizes bigger personnel groups — with two or three tight ends on the field at once — with more regularity than any other play-caller in the league. He’s also been one of the league leaders in play-action usage.
But if Chicago is ripping off only three yards per carry on designed runs, then the threat of a play-action pass is minimized. Make the defense have to put more guys in the box and then make them pay with play-action. That’s the name of the game. But on Monday night, that’s not the game that the Bears were able to play.
Takeaway #4: Penalties — Some Legitimate, Some Questionable — Emerge As An Issue For Bears
We had heard all summer long that the Bears offense was having all kinds of issues pre-snap, but after three preseason games and a month and a half of camp, you’d hope those issues would’ve been resolved. Well, that wasn’t the case against the Vikings.
In Week 1, only the Tennessee Titans and New Orleans Saints were penalized more times (13) than the Bears were (12). And in some respect, that makes sense because the Titans and Saints were widely expected to be among the worst teams in the NFL this year.
Were all of these penalties legit? No they weren’t, and I’m not usually the type to make statements like this one because I hate coming off as conspiracy theorist guy, but when Troy Aikman is on the call openly questioning a number of the calls that went against the Bears, it’s at least worth mentioning.
Still, the Bears have some cleaning up to do, and Ben Johnson knows it.
“We said going into Week 1 that the team that would make the least number of mistakes would win the game. Unfortunately, we were on the wrong side of that. We made too many there late in the game, myself included,” Johnson said after the game, per ESPN’s Courtney Cronin.”When you look down at the stat sheet and you see 12 penalties, that’s got to get cleaned up in a hurry, yet we’ve been saying that all training camp, as well. We’ll find a way to get that done.”
Takeaway #5: Let’s Not Judge Bears Defense Before Jaylon Johnson, Kyler Gordon and TJ Edwards Return
While it was unquestionably discouraging to see the Bears give up 21 points in the 4th quarter alone against Minnesota, I’m going to reserve my judgment or panic until after three starters return to the field this season. And we’re not just talking about three fringe starters. We’re talking about the two best cornerbacks on the roster and the team’s leading tackler from the 2024 season who didn’t suit up for the season opener.
Only after Jaylon Johnson, Kyler Gordon and TJ Edwards all return to action will I feel comfortable making a definitive statement on this Dennis Allen-run defense. The only definitive statement I can make right now though is that we need those three Pro Bowl caliber players back on the field ASAP if we want this season to remotely resemble the 2018 campaign.
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