Game Comments: Saints at Bears 12/15/14

Offense

1. The Bears came out seemingly determined to run the ball. This time both in word and in deed. Three of the first five plays were runs. The sixth play was a nice play action.

2. Cutler was really inaccurate to start the game. He also had a really hard time letting go of the ball. He had a horrible game. He’s timid, he’s confused, he’s a complete mess right now.

3. Given Cutler’s state of inaccuracy, it was fortunate that the Saints had trouble filling gaps on the run defense. It was a contest to see who could be more inept – the Bears blocking or the Saints run defense. Eventually the Saints started crashing the line and penetrating to stop the run and Forte struggled. They had little to worry about in terms of the passing game from Cutler.

4. The Bears offensive line didn’t help Cutler out much as they had a pretty bad game in protection against the Saints blitzes.

Defense

1. The Bears mixed it up but played a lot of man-to-man on the Saints offense. The coverage generally wasn’t very good. The Bears are bad in the defensive backfield right now.

2. The Bears struggled to stop the screen play and, really, that single play was responsible for their scoring opportunities early as the were pretty incompetent running everything else.

3. The Bears also struggled to get pressure on Drew Brees. Brees generally looked comfortable and he generally performed like it.

4. And, again, the Bears struggled with misdirection plays as the Saints took advantage of the young defense trying to be aggressive.

5. Kyle Fuller had a flat out bad game here. He’s either hurt or regressing badly. In fairness he was matched up a lot on Jimmy Graham.

6. Some really poor tackling out there.

7. The Saints don’t seem to run the ball much and I was surprised they didn’t challenge the Bears more on the ground. I thought they had reasonable success when they did.

8. I don’t know who had Josh Hill on the Saints first touchdown of the second half but it was yet another broken coverage, something that’s been all too frequent this year. Ryan Mundy had him but looked like he thought he was passing him off to someone else on the play that he thought was behind him.

Miscellaneous

1. Mike Tirico was his usual professional self. Jon Gruden was a disappointment. He sounded like he hadn’t done his homework and had mailed in this performance to some extent. There was a lot of off the cuff BS’ing going on. Tirico made most of the good points. Gruden’s contract extension with ESPN wasn’t good news if that’s the way he’s going to perform every week.

2. The Saints botched a field goal but, being gentlemen, the Bears gave them another shot at it with a holding call by Jared Allen. The Saints missed the second attempt and I swear circus music started playing in my head.

   The Bears also ran a really poor fake punt in the second quarter. not only did it fail but they only had 10 men on the field.

   Patrick O’Donnell had a good game. There were some good kick off returns as well as the Saints kicker had a tough time kicking it deep.

3. There weren’t many out right drops as Cutler made virtually every pass a difficult one to catch. The Saints did well here, too.

4. There were an unbelievable number of penalties on both sides. Special teams had a penalty on the very first kick off of the game starting the offense inside the 10 yard line.

   Kyle Fuller had a damaging pass interference call at the end of the first quarter. That led to a touchdown.

5. Jay Cutler was intercepted on the very first series on a pretty bad pass. The Saints gave it back two plays later on a fumble by Nick Toon. Great start. Cutler’s interception was the first of many and a better team than the Saints would have put up even more points than they did.

6. On behalf of Chicago Bears fans everywhere we’d like to apologize to the rest of the league for subjecting you to this. Let’s all hope the networks will let the Bears and their fans suffer alone in quiet dignity on Sunday afternoons next season.