Takeaways from the Bears’ Disastrous 10th Straight Loss
The Chicago Bears’ struggles continued on Thursday night as they dropped their 10th consecutive game by a score of 6-3 to the Seattle Seahawks. There was more coaching malpractice, questionable playcalling, and missed opportunities for this Bears team. With the regular season mercifully coming to an end after next week, what can the Bears take away from this disastrous primetime performance? Unfortunately, the positives continue to be few and far between. Here are the three main takeaways from the Bears' 10th straight defeat.
Coaching continues to be an issue
The coaching staff has been a main talking point for the Bears all season long, even going back to the offseason. Chicago has fired offensive coordinator Shane Waldron and Head Coach Matt Eberflus already this season over the course of this losing streak. However, the coaching has not gotten any better since the departure of those two gentlemen; in fact, there is an argument that it has gotten even worse. Chicago has only been in one one-score game since Matt Eberflus was fired and Thomas Brown took over. The Bears called two timeouts with the clock stopped in the final three minutes of Thursday night’s game, one of which came right before the two-minute warning when they were deciding whether to punt or not on fourth down from midfield. They ended up putting the offense back on the field and converting, but the extra timeout would have been critical to have in their back pocket for the last few moments of the game.
The offense lacks an identity
Bears fans were hopeful that the promotion of Thomas Brown to offensive coordinator and play caller after the firing of Shane Waldron would improve the flow of the offense, but that has not been the case. There were sparks of positivity from the offense in the game against the Packers, but that was Brown’s first game as playcaller. Now that there has been film for the league to study on Brown’s style of offense, it feels as if the Bears have made no progress when it comes to the offensive flow. The offensive line played one of its worst games on Thursday as Caleb Williams was sacked seven times and was on his back basically all night, even when he got the ball out of his hands. D’Andre Swift was unable to get going on the ground as he only had 53 yards rushing, and they were inefficient on third downs as Chicago went just 5-16 on third down conversions. Overall, the lack of a downfield passing attack and the constant pressure on Willimas have been the most frustrating aspects of this Bears offense this season, and they are going to have to address both of those things this offseason if they want to turn this thing around and get the most potential out of their young quarterback as possible.
They continue to get in their own way
This is a common theme among bad teams in the NFL, but it is blatantly apparent with the Bears on a weekly basis, and it showed its face again on Thursday night. Whether it was the dropped interception in the red zone by Tremaine Edmunds, the various pre-snap penalties, or the pos-snap penalties that took big plays and even a touchdown off the board, it always feels like the Bears are beating themselves more than the opponent is. Along that same note, the clock management at the end of halves and games continues to shoot the Bears in the foot in close games. All of those things played a role in Thursday’s loss to Seattle. It does not matter how talented a team is, but if they can not get out of their own way and clean up the little things, they are going to continue to beat themselves. Chicago will end its 2024 season next Sunday as they travel to Green Bay to take on the Packers.
