I’m going to try to keep a level head the morning after the Bears blew a golden opportunity to end their string of defeats to the Green Bay Packers, losing, 20-19, on a last-second blocked field goal attempt by Cairo Santos.
But I’m still seething about the defeat, and the manner in which it happened.
I know it’s in vogue to pile on Bears head coach Matt Eberflus and blame him for every little thing that goes wrong on the football field. And for the most part, I abstain from that. He’s made his fair share of mistakes in his time as coach of the Bears, but everybody shares in responsibility when the team loses any given week.
Today, I will call out his decision not to try to move the game-winning field goal attempt just a little bit closer with half a minute remaining and one timeout in the back pocket.
Although Bears kicker Cairo Santos publicly stated he was okay with the distance of the attempt and did not second-guess his coach’s decision to run out the clock rather than run another play, I do feel every yard helps. As a former kicker myself, I know that trajectory does get affected by the distance of a kick. And given that the Packers blocked Santos’ kick by a finger, he could have cleared a slightly closer attempt with higher elevation.
That final kick aside, I’m still not pleased with the performance of the team throughout the rest of the game. I had someone try to comfort me by suggesting we Bears fans look at the silver lining, that somehow we should feel good about Caleb Williams’ performance and that at least the Bears didn’t get blown out.
I’ll admit, my first post Sunday on X was praying that the Bears didn’t get blown out. I’m tired of the ass-kickings dispensed by the Packers, the one-sided rivalry, and the national embarrassments.
But that doesn’t mean I’m okay with the moral victory. Moral victories are for losers.
The Bears lost. To the Packers. Again.
Yes, the main goal for this season, now that the Bears seem headed for another playoff-less January, is developing Williams for the next coaching regime. So, according to that litmus test, the Bears passed, because Williams played one of his best games as a pro and seemingly led the offense on a would-be game-winning drive by making some clutch throws.
But it wasn’t good enough.
While I’m not going to claim Williams was the reason they lost, I also want to keep in perspective that the offense scored just 19 points on the day. And that’s bad enough to get you beat most Sundays.
I’m all done with silver linings and moral victories. We need wins, and lots more than the Bears have been getting the past decade and a half.
I’m also done with pinning my emotions to hope and promise. I like Caleb and I think he’s going to be a good player in this league. But that’s contingent on the Bears getting the offense right, something they’ve done for maybe a handful of years in the modern era of football.
Good for Thomas Brown stepping into the offensive coordinator role on short notice and getting the offense to look respectable.
Now it’s time to move it beyond respectable into a winning unit. The average points per game in the NFL is around 22. It’s sad that as Bears fans, we would delight in having an average offensive output.
Could you imagine how thrilled we would be if, over the rest of the season, the offense averaged 24 points per game? With the Bears’ defense only allowing 18.7 points per game, that would be winning football.
C’mon, Bears: let’s go be average for the final 7 games of the year. It’s a low bar, but one that is necessary to clear in order to give the fans hope that something good is coming next year.
