The season is all but over for the Chicago Bears after falling to the Minnesota Vikings 19-13 on Monday Night Football. They may not technically be out of it due to their record, but with arguably the worst offense in the NFL and no improvement week to week, and this most recent 4 game losing streak, it’s over. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, the Bears are probably better off losing out the rest of the season. They need to improve on draft position.
I guess you can say this game was close overall because the defense kept the team in it, but at no point did it feel like the Bears could pull off a win. Even after that kick return for a touchdown it didn’t seem like the Bears took control even though they had a lead. Those hoping for some changes in the offense after the play-calling duty change, were quickly brought back down to earth.
It’s almost impossible at this point to find positives with this team, but here we go…
Good Bears
Cordarrelle Patterson had a 104 yard kick return for a TD. It was the 8th of his career which puts him in a tie for all-time kick returns. He’s now tied with Joshua Cribbs and Leon Washington.
The Bears scored in the 3rd quarter. It was only the second TD in the 3rd quarter this season and it still wasn’t scored by the offense….but they scored?
Defense played well again. Same old story. Bears D good, Bears O bad. The Bears got two turnovers (INT and FR) and a sack while holding the Vikings to 19 points and Dalvin Cook to 96 yards on 30 carries and 16 yards through the air. Cook came into the game on an absolute tear having averaged 182 yards per game in his last 5. So the Bears holding him to what they did… it was a great performance.
Not a lot of penalties. One to be exact… for 5 yards. This was a big improvement for the Bears. They’re top 3 in penalties, so only having one all game was a pretty impressive jump.
Cairo Santos has been great. It’s nice to have a reliable kicker. With the two field goals on Monday night, he’s at 14 consecutive FG’s made. Looking more and more like Pineiro might be out of a job.
Bad Bears
Offense is beyond bad. This is reaching historic levels of bad. Another game going up against a pretty poor defense and the Bears couldn’t capitalize. The Vikings are a bottom 10 passing defense and the Nick Foles mustered up 106 yards passing. It’s just embarrassing at this point. Terrible play leading to 6 total points score by the offense. Those two turnovers they had? 3 total points out of them. This offense has scored 20 total touchdowns all season. TWENTY in 10 games. The only teams that have scored less are the Jets, Giants, and Broncos. This is the company the Bears are in right now…
The Bears had 2 first downs in the second half. TWO! After that kick return, here was the Bears’ offense:
- 3 plays, 3 yards, punt
- 3 plays, 0 yards, punt
- 3 plays, -5 yards, punt (for those keeping score… that’s -2 yards of offense in the second half with 47 seconds left in the 3rd quarter)
- 3 plays, 5 yards, punt
- 5 plays, 11 yards, turnover on downs
- 6 plays, 18 yards, turnover on downs
An absolute joke.
Foles got hurt at the end of the game. Not that it matters for the offense, but you never want to see a guy get hurt. Reports over night are saying tests are coming back fine, but it will be something to monitor during the bye week.
Nothing changed with the play-calling change. I think we need one more game, but you see the box score. 6 points, no TDs, and a horrendous offense. Same thing.
Poor 3rd down conversion rate again. The Bears followed up their stellar 2-15 3rd down conversion rate performance against the Titans with a 2-11 showing on Monday night.
Where the hell is Robert Quinn? What is going on with this guy? 5 years and $70 million because they didn’t want to pay Floyd for one more year. At the time it seemed like a good move to sign Quinn, but you could tell me he was on IR this season and I wouldn’t bat an eye. He’s got like one sack on the season and plays about half the downs. Another waste and now a huge contract tying the Bears up.
There’s nothing left to say at this point, but refuse to say it’s a bad “team” because the defense is awesome, but the same cannot be said for the offense. Best possible outcome for the rest of this season is for the Bears to just lose out and get as high of a draft pick as possible. It sucks, but it’s true. Anyone that thinks this team can do anything even if they were to sneak into the playoffs hasn’t been paying attention. Their 5-1 start was a fluke and has only hurt the future of this franchise in terms of a draft pick. If they hadn’t lucked into those wins, they could be looking at a top 5 pick in the next draft. Right now they’re hovering around the 12 range, hopefully this can be improved upon. With no improvements week after week, it’s also looking like it’s time to clean house. We have a large enough sample size at this point.
The Bears have a bye this week and then travel up to Lambeau for Sunday night football. I joked last week about flexing the Bears out of Monday night, but this is a real request/hope/question/whatever you want to call it… can we PLEASE flex the Bears out of Sunday Night Football?? Aaron Rodgers will do his usual ass-kicking of the Bears, and it will be another embarrassing night on national television. No one wants to see that…well, except Packers fans. Haven’t you seen enough of it at this point??
I for one am relieved the team has a bye this week. I need a break from this team. It’ll be nice to not be forced into watching a Bears game for one weekend. Another season, another let down in the city of Chicago… Only 6 more games, folks.
Chicago Bears already doing homework on potential QB replacement
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