The Chicago Bears lost an absolutely disastrous game against the Cleveland Browns on Sunday 26-6. It was just about as one-sided of a game as humanly possible.
The Bears had one net-yard passing. That’s not a typo. ONE net yard passing. They didn’t convert a 3rd down until after halftime. Fields was sacked and pressured a million times. They averaged 1.1 yards per play, which was the 2nd lowest in an NFL game this century. This was an all time bad game.
I didn’t think I would have ever seen a worse game than the Eagles vs Bears in 2019 offensively. If I remember correctly the Bears had like less than 10 yards of offense in the first half that game, and this was worse.
There isn’t much to go on for this game but let’s go…
Good Bears
The Defense came to play. Surprisingly enough, there was a good from this game and honestly, if it wasn’t for the Bears being a complete joke offensively, people would probably be getting on Cleveland’s O-line and celebrating the Bears defensive line play. The Bears were in the backfield consistently all day, leading to 5 total sacks. 3.5 of which came from Mack and Quinn. This is what fans were expecting from these two when Quinn was signed last year. They’ve finally turned their pressure and play into sacks. It wasn’t all sacks though, the Bears were getting some stops on 3rd and 4th down. Getting off the field and giving the offense good field position, which the offense did nothing with. This Browns offense can be pretty explosive and they didn’t just destroy the Bears. Eddie Jackson had another glaring missed tackle, but we’ll lay off him for one week. All in all, it was a good showing by the Defense. They couldn’t catch a break with the Offense playing as poorly as they did though.
Cairo Santos extended his FG streak. That’s 31 in a row for the Bears’ kicker. Pretty impressive stuff. One was a 47 yarder too, so no chip shot by any means.
Bad Bears
Ah where to start…
Matt Nagy is lost. I’ve been saying this for at least 2 years now, this guy doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing. The excuses have run out. It’s not just this specific game either. No matter who the QB is, who’s on the offensive line, who his RB is, who the coordinators are, it’s the same story week after week. This guy has a vision of an offense that is complete trash. He makes no adjustments in regard to what is happening on the field or who he has personnel-wise. His young QB was running for his life all day and he didn’t change a damn thing. No extra TE help, no moving Fields out of the pocket, abandoned the running game. Just totally lost. Every press conference after a game he says he needs to “go back and look at the tape”. What is this goddamn idiot looking at exactly in these tape sessions? He’s obviously not learning from anything he’s watching. Does he just hit play and work on something else like when us normal people get assigned some corporate training video to watch? I saw a lot of “I think we own Mitch an apology” comments on social media Sunday, too. Yeah no shit. It’s Nagy. It’s always been Nagy. Just like we’ve seen this year, he never made adjustments for Mitch to help him. Now is Mitch… Mahomes or Brady or Rodgers or Peyton or Brees? No. But I bet he’s better than he was given credit for since he started his NFL career with a joke of a coach. If you’re reading this and don’t think that Nagy is a huge problem, I don’t know what else to tell you. Almost everyone sees it except the Bears organization. This guy has to get out of town before he ruins Justin Fields.
Nagy might be losing the team. Still on Nagy here. We’ve seen comments and little bits and pieces here and there over the past couple years, and even recently, that seem to question Nagy and his decisions/plans (Goodwin comments, Lazor comments), but we had some more things pop up this weekend that make you go hmmm.
Jimmy Graham was retweeting this highlighting how much of a joke this offense was:
The Bears averaged 1.1 yards per play vs the Browns, the 2nd-fewest by any team in a game this century. pic.twitter.com/0oo2rvU99i
— NFL on CBS 🏈 (@NFLonCBS) September 26, 2021
Nick Foles was seen on the sideline talking to Andy Dalton and (based on lip reading) saying “This offense just isn’t working”.
Nick Foles “offense just isn’t working” pic.twitter.com/do0Uj8HQco
— Cody B (@Cody_ChiBears) September 26, 2021
These vets have to be fed up with this joke of a coach.
This game was pointless for Justin Fields. Fields didn’t look great, but I place very little blame on him (see above). He was running for his life all day, so I don’t think he got a fair shot. Sucks that this wasn’t even a chance for him to learn. Just a complete waste of a game for his development. Maybe the only good thing to get out of this is him seeing how bad of a coach Nagy is. I hope guys like Dalton and Foles are telling him this isn’t what an NFL offense is supposed to be like.
Mack is hurt. Well, maybe. It sounds like he has a foot sprain. He left the game and actually went back to the locker room, but was able to return in the second half. Hopefully this isn’t a nagging injury that lasts all season. Mack is one of those guys where his foot has to be cut off for him not to play, but a sprained foot isn’t going to make him any better. We’ll see how that progresses through the week.
This was a really bad game, but I don’t want to finish this without brining up another issue that is larger than this game. Pace definitely has blame in all this. He’s made the wrong signings. He’s made bad draft picks. He’s allowing this Nagy circus to continue. It falls on him. Whether he is with the Bears beyond this year remains to be seen and I don’t know what can save him at this point, but I don’t know how he can continue to let Nagy run the show. He’s probably going to stick by him, but if he has any interest in saving his job or saving face for future jobs, he’s gotta get Nagy out of there.
At this point the Bears should be lumped in with perennial joke teams like the Jaguars, Bengals, Jets, Lions, and Texans. They’re competing with the Jets for the worst of the worst offensively and that’s saying something. All of those teams lose, but their offenses are far better than the Bears. Does everyone realize the Bears have just 575 yards of offense in 3 games? That they’re ranked 31st in points scored on offense? That they’re 32nd in yardage? For reference, there are 32 teams in this league. That’s where this team is at. Matt Nagy, Mr. Offense himself.
The Bears are back home in Week 4 to take a on a Detroit Lions team that is pretty scrappy. They’ve hung in there against the 49ers, Packers, and Ravens, so anyone thinking “it’s the Lions” and “the Bears will figure it out”, better temper those expectations real quick. The Bears may squeak by somehow but it isn’t going to be because of this offense. I just can’t see it… Not until someone else is running this offense.
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