Bear Digest

Bears Report Card: Pity the Next Coach Who Inherits All of This

The Seahawks offered up their former coach to try and help fix the Bears after surviving one of the most inept offensive efforts an NFL team could muster.
Gene Chamberlain|
Leonard Williams sacks Caleb Williams in the second quarter Thursday night, one of seven sacks the Bears allowed.
Leonard Williams sacks Caleb Williams in the second quarter Thursday night, one of seven sacks the Bears allowed. | Talia Sprague-Imagn Images

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Chicago Bears

Even the Seattle Seahawks seemed to feel sorry for the Bears.

After Thursday night' 6-3 Bears loss to the Seahawks, the visitors seemed to offer up their former coach to try and rectify the mess in Chicago. Having lived for another day in the playoff chase, they had plenty to say about the report that former Seahawks coach Pete Carroll would be interested in the Bear job.

"Coach Carroll, man, is a special human being,” Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith told reporters about Carroll. "He's a believer. He's a guy who's always gonna be upbeat. He's always going to fight. He has one way about him, and that's what I love about him. I think we're very, very much the same in that way. We just go. There's no stop, nothing like that. We just go."

Former Illinois player Devon Witherspoon called Carroll a fun guy.

“He’s a players’ coach, man,” he said. “A lot of players are going to gravitate toward him as soon as he gets there, if he does get that job. He knows how to make work (not) feel work, so that’s what makes it fun playing for him.”

Added Smith: “Coach Carroll, he can help out any team,” Smith said. “He can help out anybody.”

Not anybody. The Bears on Thursday made a statement about being hopeless.

They probably should consider the 73-year-old Carroll because once some of the younger potential candidates, like Ben Johnson, look closely at what transpired in Thursday's game and every one of the losses in the current 10-game Bears losing streak, they will want to go to the Jets or the Saints, or Giants or Raiders or Jaguars or any other place in the league.

Trying to conduct a two-minute drive, they managed to waste two timeouts in ways no one would. They finished the game with one timeout still and looking totally in disarray with three straight incompletions and a game-ending Riq Woolen interception.

A false start on a fourth-and-1, indecision by coach Thomas Brown about whether to go for it on fourth down after the false start, sending the punt team on and then pulling them off after burning a timeout during a clock stoppage.

Quarterback Caleb Williams got hit in the throat and wasn't able to function properly after completing a miracle fourth-and-14 pass to leaping DJ Moore and couldn't get up to the line of scrimmage quickly.

It was just one thing after another and no one would want to come to Chicago, a place where last night they chanted for the owners to "sell the team."

Afterward, team president Kevin Warren wore a grave expression on his face outside the Bears locker room, as he should. He's trying to get a stadium built and no one is going to give money to a project for an organization that puts a pathetic display like that on the field.

Tight end Cole Kmet was asked afterward if he thought the Seahawks defensively had done things to take the Bears out of their rhythm. It seemed laughable to anyone who saw the Bears' "rhythm" most of the year.

"No, I don't think so," Kmet said. "I think it was all us, honestly.

"I think there was a lot of things that we didn't do well enough and I think that's kinda been the theme and story of the year for us offensively. Just gotta find ways to be better."

There are lots of ways to be better than what the Bears showed on offense Thursday. Snapping a football and falling down on the ball would be better.

Getting Williams sacked a team record 67 time this year, including seven Thursday, was only part of their futility. They trotted poor punter Tory Taylor onto the field seven times as they wore out his leg. They had 10 possessions and eight failed to go longer than 10 yards.

It makes little sense to drone on about one game when there have been any number of them in a 10-game Bears collapse just as disparaging.

So as silly as signing Carroll as coach at 73 years old might seem to some, they probably should consider him or maybe Jimmy Johnson, who is 81, or Barry Switzer, who is 87. They also won national titles and Super Bowls like Carroll.

It's a total wreck.  Here are the grades from another Bears fiasco, this one not merely on national TV like the Thanksgiving Day farce at Detroit but streaming internationally for all the world to see.

At one time the NFL blacked out games locally to try and jack up the gate revenue. With the Bears, they should consider a permanent TV blackout.

Running Game: D-

D'Andre Swift did actually break a 12-yard run and DJ Moore carried an end-around for 11. They even converted a third-and-1 by giving it to Roschon Johnson. Thanks to Caleb Williams' 37 yards scrambling, they managed to crack 100 yards rushing for only the third time in the last nine games. So for that they avoid an F.

Passing Game: F

The best pass Williams threw occurred while he ran away from the line of scrimmage at a steep angle with an army of pass rushers after him and flung it as hard as he could so DJ Moore could leap and pull it down on the final drive for a first down to convert third-and-14. It took a lot of searching to finding something Williams threw that looked close to a basic, on-time throw from the pocket for a gain of yardage. The TD pass he threw looked nice. Of course, it didn't count, as Jake Curhan, the sub for Teven Jenkins, was holding. Keenan Allen had a dropped pass during the game and right now that seems like a highlight compared to some of the other plays they made attempting to throw it. Only four players caught passes and only Rome Odunze averaged more than 9 yards a catch. And Odunze only caught one, for 15 yards. Williams looked like he'd been run over by a train on a few of the seven sacks he took. Overall the Bears averaged 79.2 inches per pass play. That's 2.2 yards.

Run Defense: B+

It wasn't the 122 yards rushing they allowed that looked so impressive. They've done better six other times. It was how they adjusted at halftime and shut it down to force Seattle to pass that gave them hope of winning a game without the offense doing anything. They allowed only 31 yards on 10 attempts in the second half as Gervon Dexter,  T.J. Edwards and DeMarcus Walker disrupted and shut down Zach Charbonnet's running.

Pass Defense: B-

Like the run defense, they seemed to grow stronger as the game went on, fueled by a consistent pass rush. Montez Sweat and Darrell Taylor made sacks. While they couldn't intercept a Geno Smith pass, they held him to 160 net yards and the explosive receiver triumvirate of DK Metcalf, Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Tyler Lockett could manage just three catches apiece with only one gain longer than 19 yards. It might have been Kyler Gordon's best game with the Bears, making six tackles, a pass defense, a forced fumble and a recovery. The only way it could have been better would have been if he hadn't made contact while stripping the ball because then he'd have scored a touchdown.

Special Teams: B+

Taylor should have been given a game ball for getting five of his seven punts downed inside the 20-yard line. Cairo Santos made his only field goal. The punt coverage was the best it has been all year, with no return yardage on the seven punts and one vicious hit delivered by Josh Blackwell. Blackwell also averaged 10.5 yards for his two punt returns.

Coaching: F

To have another two-minute drill look nearly as chaotic as the one they had in Detroit when Matt Eberflus was fired was inexcusable, even if it was a Thursday night with little practice time during the previous week. While Williams gets some of the blame for their two-minute drive fiasco, the bulk of it goes to the coaching. They took five minutes to go from the 11 to the Seahawks 40 when they still had three timeouts and the two-minute warning. Needless to say, Thomas Brown's chances for getting the Bears head coaching job now look about as good as the their chances appeared Thursday of scoring the tying or winning points on their final drive. In other words, no chance.

Overall: D-

Thursday night can’t be construed as an endorsement of GM Ryan Poles for his three years of work.

Twitter: BearsOnSI

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.