This Wasn’t the Team You Were Looking For and Other Bears Bullets

Why, yes, I did purchase a bottle of red wine with a Saluki dog on the label. Had I not been a bit under the weather last night, I would have popped the cork on it at some point during last night’s loss. Instead, I might bust it open after next Sunday’s Bears finale.

  • Here is your Bears-centric highlight from Sunday Night Football:
  • Seriously. That’s it. Save for the clip of Devin Hester in his return to Soldier Field that is embedded above, Sunday’s 26-3 loss to the Chiefs was a three-hour slap in the face. I hope the executives who green-lighted Bears-Chiefs not being flexed get nothing but coal in their Christmas stockings.
  • Chicago proved why it didn’t deserve to be in prime-time last night. The offense wilted under the lights. Its defense couldn’t get off the field when it mattered the most. Undisciplined play all over the field hurt at every turn. Drops. Missed tackles. Blown coverages. If it was bad, the Bears did it last night.
  • This wasn’t supposed to be the story of the 2019 Bears. Not after last year’s excellence. Not when they were among the betting favorites to win the Super Bowl in the offseason. I keep coming back to thinking that this wasn’t supposed to be the Bears. Those ghosts were supposed to have been vanquished by the reigning NFL Coach of the Year and a GM who was voted as the league’s Executive of the Year by his peers. Instead, last night was a throwback to an era of football we thought the Bears were leaving behind after a surprisingly awesome 2018 season. The ghosts of Bears past failures re-emerged and ruined the regular-season finale of the franchise’s 100th season. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, but I suppose it is fitting this is how it went down. 
  • Not great, Zack:
  • Nailed it:
  • What was your favorite play on Sunday? A fade route on 4th-and-goal? What about the read-option QB run on 3rd-and-goal that preceded it? Where does punting on 4th-and-7 from Chiefs territory while down 10-0 with 7:45 left in the second quarter fit in the equation? How about a jump ball into double coverage that landed out of bounds? I lost count of third-down screens that were run, but I hated all of them.
  • You might put the razzle-dazzle pitch play that lost a chunk of yards on your list, and I wouldn’t be totally against it. But for the second time this year on Sunday Night Football, the Bears ran some trickery and shot themselves in the foot by not catching the ball. If Anthony Miller catches the ball, he might still be running.
  • Which moment annoyed you the most on Sunday? Was it Kevin Pierre-Louis running into the kicker? Or possibly that you realized that was the second running into the kicker penalty that directly led to an opponents touchdown drive this year? What about Aaron Lynch being offsides on 3rd-and-4 and giving the Chiefs a free first down? Pick one of the handful of players who were not properly lined up at the end of the first half that led to the Bears using a timeout to avoid a 10-second run-off and tell me that didn’t properly capture the image of the 2019 Bears. There was a reason I worried about penalties and undisciplined play in the preseason.
  • FWIW, KPL took his boneheaded mistake hard:
  • Adding injury to insult: Nose tackle Eddie Goldman (concussion) and right guard Rashaad Coward (knee) suffered injuries in the game that removed them from action. Neither returned.
  • The only lame thing about Patrick Mahomes was his explanation as to why he did the 10-count:
  • The combination of talent, swag, and cold-blooded pettiness is the stuff that drives top tier quarterbacks over the edge. At a minimum, it makes them fun to watch.
  • Adding insult onto of injury that has already been added to insult: If Mahomes’ trolling of the Bears (and the other nine teams who passed on him in the 2017 NFL Draft) annoyed you, then now might not be the best time to remind you that Deshaun Watson and the Texans are coming to town in 2020.
  • There was really only one word to describe it all, and the Bears’ two best defensive players absolutely nailed it:
  • written by

    Luis C. Medina, who you can find on Twitter at lcm1986, has been covering the Chicago Bears at Bleacher Nation since 2017. Since then, he has written about 3 head coaches, 5 play-callers, and 11 starting quarterbacks. Previously, Luis wrote about the Cubs and MLB at BN (2015-16) and worked in the Chicago Tribune sports department (2011-16). He also co-hosted a Cubs postgame show, Outside the Ivy, in 2019.

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