4th and Goal(s): Bears Head To Northwest As Just About Everything Trends South
Seattle trip brings the return of third-string Nick Foles to QB; little else in Chicago measures up to even that amount of promise
Moving out West for Week 16, the Chicago Bears seek a change of fortune when they visit Seattle to take on the Seahawks.
Like the Bears, these Seahawks have struggled through a season that has yielded nothing close to what was established expectation-wise in the off-season. After a close game with the Vikings on Monday night, one where they were seemingly down half the team, the Bears are hoping to get a victory to end their current three-game losing streak.
Maybe Nick Foles can once again be an unlikely hero for the Bears, as Chicago will be relying on him to start Sunday — both Andy Dalton and Justin Fields (kinda) are down for this game. This is no doubt a winnable game, but with Seattle playing strictly for pride at this point it very well could make one of the most difficult places to play in the NFL even more of a challenging site to get a rare win.
So here is what it will take for the Bears to win on Sunday.
Hold onto the damn ball - All throughout the Bears’ current three-game losing streak, it has felt like they’ve played competitive football. They have been in each one of these games, including the Packers and Cardinals.
What’s made the difference in all these games has been the disproportionate amount of Bears turnovers to the team’s takeaways. To put it in the most basic of terms, it is really hard to win any football game when you lose the turnover battle by two or more. As fans, we know the Bears struggle in a lot of areas on offense, defense, special teams and regarding discipline. The Bears simply have to hold onto the ball as much as possible, because they are not good enough to overcome mistakes.
Which Seahawks team shows up? - The Seahawks have had a lot of ups and downs this year, an interesting stat to look at regarding Seattle’s success is its points per game and what it gives up each game. A normally explosive offense during the Russell Wilson Era, this season the Seahawks are only averaging 20 points a game, something the Bears offense can even do.
Conversely, the Seahawks have been a top-five scoring defense in the NFL, giving up only 20 points a game. So we have a Bears team here who struggles to score and a Seahawks defense that can put the clamps down on teams. Ideally, the Bears would like to see some combination of last week’s defensive performance — which held the Vikings to under 200 yards — and the offensive performance from the Green Bay game — which saw the Bears score their only 30 point game of the season.
Secondary issues - Against Minnesota the Bears got a surprisingly solid performance from a starting secondary full of backups.
Some fans were hung up on the perceived mismanagement that allowed a gifted player like Thomas Graham Jr. to sit outside the active roster for most of the season, but it may be best to just feel encouraged by the potential turning around of a secondary that has been a problem area all season long for the team.
Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson (he who might be a Bear right now in another world somewhere in the multiverse) has been up and down all year long in what could be his final season in Seattle. If Wilson and the Seahawks offense sputters enough to keep this game limited to a physical defensive battle with shared emphasis on the run game, this will give the Bears their best chance.
If Wilson is able to connect deep downfield with reliable receivers Tyler Lockett and D.K. Metcalf then even the rainy Northwest won’t get storms brewing fast enough to rain on the Bears’ chances to win.
“Big Game” Nick - AKA, Nick Foles has been given another chance to start and will likely be trying to put on a performance to increase his standing for next year either in Chicago or somewhere else. This might be the kind of development the team needs to finally get some kick out the offense with Dalton again established as turnover-prone and Fields clearly struggling in the freshman year doldrums.
Perhaps having someone different under center, with just a fresh perspective on leading the offense, will provide different results — the team has tried everything else it could this season.
Don’t expect any types of miracles to happen in this game but the possibility arises for a one-game showcase that in a vacuum could prove Foles to be the man at back-up for the Bears in 2022, or even better, the man the Bears could flip to be someone else’s No. 2.
The key for this goal is just to have a quarterback keep the turnovers down and put enough guys in the right position to succeed. Seems simple doesn’t it?
Ryan Bukowiecki covers the Chicago Bears and professional football for WARR