Ben Johnson and the Bears have a much bigger question to answer after Week 2 loss and it has nothing to do with Caleb Williams
The Chicago Bears looked lost offensively well before losing quarterback Caleb Williams due to injury on Sunday and head coach Ben Johnson now has a major question to answer.
You know what the worst part is of being at the top of the world? It’s a long freaking way back down if you slip. And that’s exactly what the Chicago Bears did on Sunday.
The Bears were coming off a 59-point outing in Week 1 and while the team had the right mindset coming off the big win, it took a significant turn for the worse on Sunday against the Minnesota Vikings. Chicago mustered just three points in the team’s home opener, a 56-point difference from the offensive explosion the Bears had in Week 1.
“It’s a challenging day for a lot of people,” Bears head coach Ben Johnson told reporters after the game. “We only scored three points, so yeah, we got a lot of guys that, myself included, I got to do a better job for these guys.”
Weather? Self-inflicted mistakes? The Brian Flores impact? What really went wrong on Sunday?
The conditions at Soldier Field were unbearable with rain coming down for all 60 minutes of game time. That’s not an excuse for the way this offense played, even if it was a significant factor that impacted both teams.
“It’s the Midwest. We’re going to deal with those conditions all year,” tight end Colston Loveland said in the locker room after the game. “We signed up for this. There’s no excuse about the conditions.”
Did the wet field play a role in a couple of the drops by the pass catchers? Potentially. Did the wet field play a role in the team’s fumble on the goal-line that prevented a potential touchdown opportunity? Potentially. But, that was far from the only mistake the Bears made.
The Bears had some brutal self-inflicted ones as well with the number of penalties the offense had whether it was a holding, false start, illegal motion, delay of game, intentional grounding, or illegal formation, just to name a few. At one point, the Bears had three consecutive penalties that turned a first-and-10 into a second-and-35. There’s not to many plays in the play book for a second-and-35 nor the following third-and-29 after a fourth offensive penalty backed Chicago up again on that one individual drive.
“It was just penalties, man,” Loveland added. “We had like seven or eight in the first half. Which sucks for a play-caller. When it’s first-and-20, second-and-20, third-and-15, it’s tough and it is for us too. It’s not being on track, so we gotta clean that up.”
Both of those issues set this offense back, and it didn’t help those concerns showed up during the week the offense was facing one of the league’s most dangerous defensive coordinators in Brian Flores. Flores got his revenge this week against a Ben Johnson-led offense and it wasn’t pretty. Minnesota had two turnovers and had quarterback Caleb Williams in a blender, and Tyson Bagent as well after replacing an injured Williams.
“Early on, you could feel what he wanted to do,” Johnson said. “That’s what makes going against him so challenging. We gained momentum out of halftime and drove all the way down, but then gave it up with points in the bag. Facing a good defense like that, we have to capitalize on every single opportunity.”
Sunday’s game was a sobering reality for the Bears on how quickly things can change in the NFL. But, this team is not strangers to facing adversity in the face and dealing with it.
It’s still Week 2. This loss sucks and the way they lost sucks. Now the Bears have to show they can respond to this kind of adversity again, and potentially do it without their starting quarterback. There’s a lot to clean up and figure out this upcoming week.
