Chicago Bears: 10 Takeaways from NFL Week 8
The Bears' mind-boggling 18-15 loss to the Washington Commanders will prove to be the defining moment of a semi-wasted season.
IT WAS A LOVELY Sunday afternoon in Landover, Maryland.
The light breeze and the distant smell of leaves cheerfully whispered, Autumn is here!
The turf at Northwest Stadium — the home of the Washington Commanders — was vibrant green and well-shorn, ideal for an NFL football game.
And Washington’s opponent, the Chicago Bears, were hot garbage.
Until they weren’t.
And then they were.
In case you somehow missed it — and if you did, consider yourself lucky — visiting the Commanders and their brilliant but hobbled rookie quarterback phenom Jayden Daniels, the Bears stunk for three-plus quarters…and then they were really good for about nine minutes…and then they stunk for 12 seconds…and those 12 seconds put the early nail in the coffin of their 2024 season.
More importantly for the franchise moving forward, those 12 seconds might earn Head Coach Matt Eberflus and his staff a whole pad of pink slips come Black Monday.
At least one can hope.
Anyhoobs, we won’t discuss the uncalled holding penalty on the stomach-churning final play that helped make this eminently Bears-ian debacle possible, because what’s the point. So what-say we go right to the takeaways:
1) Tyreke Stevenson Is a Jackass
At some point before the infamous Hail Jayden, Tyrique Stevenson thought, “Hey, I have a f***ing great idea! What if I blow off a play that can clinch one of the franchise’s most noteworthy, improbable wins of the 21st Century so I can make fun of the Commanders fans! And then I can tiptoe back into our prevent formation, knock down the Hail Mary attempt, and be the hero Chicago so desperately needs!”
Stevenson executed the first part of his plan to perfection. Part two, not so much.
One of the most frustrating things about Stevenson’s showboat-y brain fart is that he likely won’t suffer any real consequences. During their halftime recap of the game, NBC’s SNF studio crew surmised that Eberflus likely didn’t address the matter immediately after the game, and probably wouldn’t do so until today (Monday), at which point he’d give the second-year corner a gentle slap on the wrist and send him on his merry way.
Now Stevenson didn’t single-handedly kneecap the game — this was very much a full team, full coaching staff, and full front office loss — but his boneheaded hi-jinx leading up to the dagger merit an enforced week or two off, preferably without pay.
If Eberflus doesn’t punish Stevenson — if the hopefully-soon-to-be-unemployed HC decides that a good talkin’ to will suffice — then that gives the rest of the roster tacit permission to douchebag their way through the last three months of the season.
And with the season all but over, I’m sure that several members of Chicago’s underachieving 53 will do just that.
2) If I Were as Bad at My Job as Shane Waldron Is At His, I Wouldn’t Have a Job
Let’s say a magazine editor tells me, “Yo, Alan, I need a 2,500-word article about the history of the Panama Canal by Thursday,” and I turn in a 1,250-word article about my favorite burritos in Chicago sometime next February, I’m pretty confident that said editor would purge me from their Rolodex. As well they should.
Yesterday, what with his doofus game plan and bizarre-o situational calls, Bears first-year Offensive Coordinator Shane Waldron delivered the football equivalent of my burrito essay — except my burrito essay wouldn’t have set an entire franchise back three seasons.
Whether dialing up an ill-timed quarterback draw or an inexplicable goal line handoff to a 19th-string offensive lineman, Waldron came across as overmatched, unprepared, and straight-up weird, justifiably losing all the good will he’d accrued over the previous two weeks.
Listen, Waldron is who he is — a below-average offensive mind — and what with almost 20 years of coaching experience to his name, he’s clearly set in his ways, and the chances of him dramatically improving are slim.
Long story short, Waldron’s not the guy. If he’s still on staff next spring, I’ll be shocked.
3) The Offensive Line Can’t and Won’t Be Fixed Until Next Season
Caleb Williams’ October 27 stat line stunk. We’re talking 10-of-24 for 131 yards (career lows), 2 sacks taken, and a QBR of 36.1. His accuracy and decision-making were distinctly rookie-esque, but it wasn’t all his fault, as it’s impossible to succeed in any profession when your co-workers don’t have your back.
Or, as is the case with the Bears’ offensive line, your front.
Williams isn’t blameless, mind you — he had a couple of egregious over-throws that had me flashing back to the Mike Glennon era — but things would’ve looked way different had he had consistently competent pass protection.
What with the whiffed blocks, the doltish pre-snap penalties, and the baffling missed assignments, we don’t need numbers to tell us the Bears O-line is crap. (The numbers might quantify the crappiness, but what does that get us? Nothing, that’s what.)
Darnell Wright, last season’s highly-touted first-round pick — who GM Ryan Poles chose over Jalen Carter, Jahmyr Gibbs, Zay Flowers, Sam LaPorta, and Joey Porter Jr., among many other studs — is PFF’s 60th-ranked pass blocker (that’s out of 120, folks). Tevin Jenkins is a walking injury, and Kiran Amegadjie was either overwhelmed with the rookie jitters or is just really, really terrible at football. Pretty much every other O-lineman on the roster got hurt.
And as of right now, nothing can be done to fix it.
Quality offensive linemen are an NFL premium, and ain’t nobody trading one in-season, so what you’re seeing now is what you’ll be seeing in December. Which means poor Caleb will spend the second half of the season running for his life.
If Poles somehow still has his gig in 2025, he’d damn well better use his first three Draft picks on O-linemen. Killer young guards, centers, or tackles rarely hit free agency, so that’s the only way this untenable situation will change.
4) Man, Did I Screw the Pooch On D’Andre Swift
In March, the day after Poles inked then-free-agent Swift, I bitched:
With a number of solid free agent running backs available, Poles inked D’Andre Swift — a 25-year-old who, according to a whole lot of advanced metrics, is a slightly above average player — to a three-year, $24 million deal.
Turns out Swift is better than slightly-above-average. For that matter, over most of the last month, the 25-year-old running back has been the only Bear who’s consistently made the offense watchable.
Swift ranks eighth among running backs in total yards from scrimmage and tenth in rushing yards. So yeah, dude’s a legit weapon, and I was legit wrong.
5) The Bears Didn’t Draft the Wrong Quarterback, but My Lord, Did They Hire the Wrong Offensive Coordinator
We can all agree that Jayden Daniels is one helluva quarterback.
We can also all agree that if Daniels were running Shane Waldron’s playbook behind Chicago’s dreadful offensive line, he’d be Caleb Williams.
We can also all agree that if Williams were running Kliff Kingsbury’s playbook behind Washington’s solid offensive line, he’d be Jayden Daniels.
Kingsbury — who the Bears interviewed before they hired Waldron, only to give him a hearty thank-you-but-no-thank-you — is a creative, enthusiastic coordinator who knows how modern NFL offenses work. (Hell, he played a role in creating the modern NFL offense.) In his first season in Washington, Kingsbury has adapted his game plans to fit Daniels’ skill set, concocting a symbiosis that’s made the rookie an MVP candidate.
Waldron, the former Seattle OC, is a paint-by-numbers game designer who seems to think that Williams is a paint-by-numbers quarterback who can thrive in the same system that helped resurrect Geno Smith’s career.
Wrong.
6) Caleb Williams DGAF
For the vast majority of yesterday’s mess, Caleb Williams resembled Caleb Heinie. But there were two drives in the fourth quarter that almost made us forgive and forget the former Trojan’s early-game inferiority.
The drives themselves weren’t transcendently Elway-esque — none of us will remember them by Thursday morning — but what stood out was Williams’ grit.
The poor kid had been under fire all afternoon, but when the game was on the line, he went full Dan Marino, promptly getting the ball out of his hand, making quick and slick reads, throwing a handful of Mahomes-ian dimes, and, most importantly, never giving up, never letting up.
If nothing else, we learned yesterday that Williams has a never-say-die attitude, so if we get the guy some even-slightly-above-average blocking and a competent game plan, the sky’s the limit.
Or at the very least, he’ll be better than Caleb Heinie.
7) When the Defense Gets Healthy, Look Out
Take the Hail Mary out of the mix, and the Bears defense played one helluva game.
Pre-Mary, they’d kept the Commanders and their top-five offense out of the end zone, forcing them to settle for 4 field goals — and this was without two defensive anchors in Jaquan Brisker and Kyler Gordon, both of whom missed the game with injury.
Sure, Washington racked up big-time yardage — we’re talking 481 total — but the Bears D did that whole bend-but-don’t-break thing again. And if their coaching staff and offensive trench-patrollers managed to put together even a C-plus game, Daniels wouldn’t have even had a chance to deliver a last-second win.
8) More Odunze, Please
The rookie receiver led the Bears in receptions with 3 (ugh, that’s all?), and was second on the team in targets with 6. It was a small sample size, granted, but it was enough to make it evident that Odunze’s routes are getting crisper by the week, his athleticism is noice, and he boasts the vibe of a WR1.
Sure, Rome didn’t haul in half of his targets, but given more opportunity, these holes in his game will be filled, and filled quickly.
Yes, his fellow starting receivers D.J. Moore and Keenan Allen are studs, but Odunze can and will be a weapon in the league…that is, if Waldron can figure out a way to get him the ball.
9) The NFC North Is a Pain in the Ass
We’re about halfway through the 2024 NFL season, and if we’ve learned one thing, it’s that the Chicago Bears are facing a massive divisional climb.
Yesterday, the Lions posted 52 points on one of the NFL’s top defenses (Tennessee), while the Packers — with star quarterback Jordan Love sitting out most of the second half with a groin injury — held on for a tough win over Jacksonville.
If the Bears’ season ended today — and taking yesterday’s nightmare into account, that wouldn’t be a terrible thing — they wouldn’t sniff the postseason. Little surprise that the chances of them playing a meaningful game in January sunk to 20%.
Chicago has yet to play a divisional game, and if they want to amp up that 20%, they’ll need to win at least four of the six clashes against Detroit, Green Bay, and Minnesota.
But they won’t. Season over.
10) Believe it or Not, There’s a Silver Lining
Wipe away those tears, fellow Bears nerds, because now that Chicago’s postseason plans are toast — now that they have nothing to play for other than pride (except Stevenson, whose pride card has officially been revoked) — watching games will be way less stressful.
So let the tanking begin!