The performance the Chicago Bears had last week against the Green Bay Packers was not championship-caliber football on both sides of the ball. From the opening drive, the Bears were out-coached and out-played, leading to an embarrassing 31-7 loss.

Offensively, there’s reason for optimism. The unit is still led by one of the top offensive play-callers in Ben Johnson, who’s well aware of the mistakes he personally made last week, and the unit is expected to have quarterback Caleb Williams back after a three-game absence.

Defensively, there’s no telling what to expect. The unit showed similar concerns from last season and will be playing on Sunday without multiple starters. Could things improve? Certainly, just like we saw improvement after the Week 1 showing and how the unit responded the following three weeks. That improvement, however, starts with understanding what went wrong to begin with.

“That’s life in the NFL,” Bears defensive coordinator Dennis Allen told reporters on Thursday. “There’s some ups and downs throughout the season. The most important thing for us is to stay the course, continue to work to improve, there’s nothing you can do about anything that’s happened in the past. You gotta look forward and go on to the next play, the next game, and figure out how we can be better.”

Explosives killed the Bears last week, and it’s something other teams will lean into

Looking back at last week’s game, it doesn’t take an expert to see that the Packers knew they had a downfield mismatch against this unit. From the very first drive, quarterback Jordan Love was looking to go deep with the football and the arial attack continued for all four quarters and there was nothing the Bears could do to stop it.

“A lot of things went into it,” Allen explained. “So, we gotta get that fixed. That’s gotta be better. We’ve been working this week to try to get those things taken care of.”

The difficult part for Allen continues to be figuring out whether it’s a scheme issue or a personnel issue. The Bears didn’t have the speed on the outside to keep up with Christian Watson and Matthew Golden. Four defensive backs allowed a 100.0+ passer rating in that game, including cornerbacks Jaylon Johnson and Malik Muhammad II, who allowed a combined 162 passing yards.

“Well listen, the No. 1 thing I would tell all of you in this scheme it’s like being a window washer on a high-rise building,” Allen said last week. “You can’t make mistakes or you can’t have a bad day because bad things really happen. So, that’s part of the business in this. We put those guys out there and give them a tough job. All of the great ones, OK, every one of them have been beaten at some point in time. And really it’s about go on to the next play, line up again, play with the same confidence, aggression, and it’s just, it’s a part of the business.”

It can’t be a part of the business every week. Against two really good downfield quarterbacks, the Bears got exposed.

Things looked better the other three weeks, although that was against Carson Wentz (in a rainstorm), Jalen Hurts, and Geno Smith. Teams are now aware of this weakness, and quarterbacks with big arms will look to exploit it until the Bears prove they can stop it.

Michael Penix Jr. certainly has the arm needed and a dangerous downfield player in Drake London to go after that weakness. And the Bears have no plans to change up the scheme. It’s on the players to simply be better than they were last week.

Overcoming absences at potentially all three levels

The problem with that is that the Bears could potentially be without starters at all three levels. We know for sure that Montez Sweat (suspension) and Dayo Odeyingbo (quad) will not play up-front, along with T.J. Edwards (hamstring) at linebacker. The other situation to watch is Tyrique Stevenson, who was a limited participant based on Wednesday’s walk-through practice.

“You look across the league, every week, you look and there’s somebody that’s injured, somebody that’s out for a week or two weeks, six weeks, IR, whatever the case may be. The team’s that do the best job of developing those guys that are backend of the 53-man roster, practice squad, those are usually the most successful teams,” Allen said. “Because those guys are going to have to play at some point.”

Looking at Chicago’s situation, here’s some of the players that are going to have to step up. Austin Booker off the edge as the team’s top pass rusher, Shemar Turner on the defensive line in his season-debut coming off the PUP, Noah Sewell at linebacker in his second game back, and then a guy such as Jamree Kromah that could finally be active for the first time this season.

It’s truly a next-man up league and the Bears have confidence in the full roster of players that they’ve been developing all year long. Sunday will be their opportunity to step up and hope the results look a lot better than it did last week.