The Chicago Bears outlasted the Detroit Lions in a stinker of a game on Turkey Day, 16-14. Bless your soul if you made it all the way through this one. Two truly awful teams battling it out to see who sucks less.
It was a tumultuous week at Halas hall with rumors of this being Nagy’s last game, players quitting on the team, and meddling by ownership. The Bears however, showed up and barely beat the worst team in the NFL. Quite the accomplishment.
The coin toss was a good indication of how the game was going to go when the Lions won the toss, deferred, then the Bears also tried to defer, and the ref had to explain to them that they could not defer, and had to choose which way they wanted to go…
Good Bears
Darnell Mooney had another nice game. As he did last week, Mooney put up another solid game in the absence of A-rob. He did have some drops, but it was a nice game overall with 5 catches for 123 yards. One of those catches going for 52 yards. He’s a solid piece on this offense, but more WR help is going to be needed this off-season.
The defense only gave up 14 points. One would argue that 14 points are too much for the god awful Lions, but let’s give the defense some credit for holding them to 14 and really only giving up one big play to the Lions to start the game that resulted in a TD. Again, it was the Lions, but the D pretty much did their job.
Bad Bears
Running game. Here we are, once again. Monty did get 17 carries and Herbert 4, but how would you feel about their production on those touches if I told you coming into the game that the Lions had ranked 31st in rush defense? The Bears mustered up just 68 total yards on the ground as a team…against pretty much the worst rush defense in the NFL. You’d think that would be the point of emphasis for the game, especially one where you weren’t playing catch up, and not throw the ball 39 times, but this is Matt Nagy’s offense for ya…
Cairo Santos may be broken. Ever since Nagy trotted him out there for that damn 65-yard prayer against the Steelers, man. We’re back to not having confidence in the kicker as Santos missed another one kick on Thursday. That’s now two missed field goals since the Pittsburgh debacle that ended his franchise-record streak. Kickers are going to miss kicks though and Thursday’s miss was a 53-yarder, so it’s not the end of the world quite yet. Plus, he did hit the game winning field goal, albeit a chip shot, but a game winner nonetheless.
Coaching. Same old story. Weird decisions. Questionable timeouts. Penalties galore. Game plan. All of it. The only positive of this coaching staff to come from this game was at least they aren’t Dan Campbell. I can’t imagine being a Lions fan…
Injuries. The Bears were already missing key pieces going into the game (Mack, A-Rob, Hicks) and ended up with more on Thursday. Roquan left the game with a hamstring injury and it will be something to monitor throughout the week. Losing Roquan would be a major blow to the defense.
This very well could have been the final win of the Bears’ season. There are some brutal matchups the rest of the way, starting with the Cardinals next week back at home. Signs are pointing to Kyler Murray probably being back for that game, so that will be a huge challenge for the defense.
It seems like barely beating this awful team won’t cost Nagy his job, and I’m not so sure losing would have either with this inept ownership group. But with no improvement week to week and this most likely being the Bears’ last win, we can still expect Nagy to be gone at the end of the season. I just hope Ryan Pace and Ted Phillips (won’t happen) go with him.
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