3 and Out: Bears/Seahawks, Preseason Week 2
The Bears were the more prepared and more determined team in a washing of Seattle, but doubters may need more proof
“There’s always more to the story” - Louis Riddick
It’s likely you haven’t had to look hard on Twitter to find negative commentary from Chicago Bears fans regarding the commentary the ESPN “Monday” Night Football second team provided Thursday night during the Bears and Seattle Seahawks preseason contest, won 27-11 by the Bears.
Most of the negativity would likely stem from Riddick and Dan Orlovsky’s apparent marginalization of the Bears play last night and the seeming gains the team is making in the honeymoon part of the Matt Eberflus era.
The quote at the top of this piece, offered by the sharp ESPN analyst (and former fan favorite to take over the Bears’ football operations as GM) is a slight example of that, offered in the waning seconds of the game. The immediate four minutes had seen Seattle finally begin to out-play the Bears after being dominated for the first 56, including a 24-0 run by Chicago to begin the game’s scoring. By the final minute the Seahawks came painfully close to closing the game to 27-18 (or 19, given that they’d likely go for two), after two missed chances to score in the Bears’ red zone.
Anyway, those latter moments provided enough existence of doubt to allow the broadcast to say through its commentary that “see, you didn’t waste the last 3+ hours of your life watching this game, and you won’t waste it for another hour or two watching SportsCenter, coming up NOW…”
In being able to do that it took some propping up of the woefully under-performing Seahawks, who didn’t look ready to play this short week game like the Bears were - they weren’t able to move the ball up field with Geno Smith for the first 3 quarters, they lost the turnover and penalty battles with great aplomb and they didn’t bother to entertain at all by offering even a couple plays of their top-notch receiver duo Tyler Lockett and DK Metcalf, although we did get a couple good interviews with them in their full uniforms.
Seattle looked out for itself in that way and not the national audience, it kind of looked out for the Bears too as as it made those first 56 minutes Thursday as easy as possible for the road team to come in, assert itself and make itself feel good in its second preseason win.
But as I went over in much of my last piece, a lot of the football world outside of Chicago doesn’t want the Bears to feel good about themselves, for some reason. Vegas, for some reason, had the Bears as a four-point underdog coming into the game and the main storylines for national coverage regarding the team are fraught with doubt and fear for the team’s ability to take care of their top talents, those being Justin Fields and Mr. “Hold-in,” Roquan Smith.
The Bears didn’t do themselves any favors Thursday regarding Fields, who looked like he was trying to escape Camp Crystal Lake sometime in the early ‘80s with just about all of the nine snaps he had against Seattle, but Chicago still found ways to move up the field in that drive and got a field goal out of it, though a little better execution would have yielded a touchdown.
But that’s the thing about what Riddick said — even if you’re a little offended by what he inferred because of the natural insecurity that comes with being associated with the Bears in any way — it was a true statement. A lot of combinations of players were offered in this game and a lot of variables were embedded in it starting with the short week and Drew Luck’s inability to stay clear of COVID.
Luck’s inability to start for Seattle led to Geno Smith playing most of the game, which led to third-stringer Jacob Eason getting the whole fourth quarter and playing his heart out. His early two-minute warning-style slinging put extra pressure on the lower ranks of the Bears’ defensive depth chart, who got absolutely no help from the special teams, some of whom were on the field across all those final plays.
They were worn out and not particularly inspired at that point in a game that was well in hand. So yeah, more to the story. Eason and who was left out there for Seattle tried to show they had more to offer as well. That’s the preseason in a nutshell - who needs to show how much they have to offer and who gets the most chance to show it. When scores don’t really mean anything you have to dig into minutiae that only makes sense to wallow in when football is your life. I’m just doing this to entertain myself and my modest readership so…you get what you pay for. Thanks for reading :)
More to this story: The key to this game was the quick start for the Bears, something that was painfully not present under Nagy. Again, like in Saturday’s game, this team at every level and every phase (offense, defense, special teams) is playing harder than last year and they all seem to have more purpose exuding in their play — its likely that they’re being prepared better in practice by the new coaching staff, its also likely that a mix of hunger and a shared chip on the shoulder is making this team more willing to absorb what the new coaches have to say, be it the carry-overs from last season and the new guys, mostly overlooked free agents and marginalized draft picks.
Two of the team’s higher profile players looked good in the drive they had together - of Fields’ 39 yards completed in the game’s opening drive, 31 went to Cole Kmet on two catches, including a 19-yarder that unfolded perfectly off a designed roll out and put the Bears into the Seahawks red zone. Fields stayed on the run through the drive, mostly out of need, and that inability to protect JF1 even in a mobile pocket has to be noted.
The excellence of execution: But Fields looks more self-assured in Luke Getsy’s offense each time we see him. It may be unfair to Nagy and his guys from ‘21, maybe Fields would look similar if he was still under their guidance this year, but you can only receive credit when you keep your job.
Speaking of keeping your job, Trevor Simian again is looking like an ideal No. 2 QB, leading a strong touchdown drive in the second quarter as part of his eight completion evening. S/o to the Peter-man (comma Nathan) as well for his eight completions, he’s doing his part as a No. 3, showing that with little pressure he can be a lot less embarrassing than he was in his previous stops.
The offense opened up well again with the second and third QBs. By game’s end 12 receivers made catches and five rushers made some sort of contribution, the trio of Trestan Ebner, Darrynton Evans and De’Montre Tuggle most so (though Tuggle’s brutal run-in with Dazz Newsome on a punt return opened the faucet for Seattle in those final minutes).
On defense, they played contain pretty easily on the Geno Smith-led Seahawks and the utilization of Velus Jones’s speed on special teams could be seen with his big punt return put the Bears a shade behind the Seattle 30 in the second quarter, setting up the Simian-led TD drive.
More work needs to be done, and the final combination that we’ll see on the offensive line could be like looking at a 3-card Monty set up right now, but even on that front one could be encouraged that after the Fields drive the line saw the starting Seattle defensive tackles through the rest of the first half and the line seemed to get better push at the line of scrimmage throughout the second quarter.
One last thing to highlight: the Bears’ maintaining a tie in the turnover category (1-1) and dominating with discipline, compiling only 3 penalties for 38 yards compared to 13 Seattle penalties for 92 yards. It is in areas like that were the Bears lost most of their games both in the John Fox and the Nagy eras, a lot of games decided by a touchdown or less were clinched on the other side because of Chicago giving yards away, giving good field possession away and ending good drives inexplicably.
On Thursday night Seattle did all those things, and Eberflus and his staff still have the explicit teaching moments provided by the game’s last minutes. This is such a good thing for a team that’s both learning how to win and learning how to play with one another. Everyone else can move the goalposts regarding the Bears’ development, but more so than in recent years this looks like a team that knows better where it is on the field at all times.