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Quick Game Comments: Packers at Bears 11/17/24?
Defense
No surprise. Green Bay came out running the ball and generally feeding Josh Jacobs. And they did it with great success. He’s been the heart of their offense all year, and he had a wonderful game.
On Green Bay’s first touchdown, the defense was so bad it’s almost indescribable. Twelve men on the field and men in coverage who had no idea what they were doing. There were so many open receivers on that play that Jordan Love could’ve picked his target. A terrible start for the Bears team that already appeared to be in disarray.
The Bears defensive line really got its rear end kicked at times today. Green Bay’s offensive line generally kept Jordan Love very clean and protected. The Bears really need to get more pressure on the quarterback in critical situations.
If you’re a Packer fan right now, you’re reasonably upset at the team for some poor red zone efficiency today. There were a couple of times where they had the ball easily within scoring position and didn’t turn it into points. Don’t get me wrong, the Bears defense was good there, and that helped. But Green Bay hurt themselves, too, and had they taken advantage of their opportunities, this game wouldn’t have been this close.
Christian Watson burned the Bears on a couple of very good plays in the second half. Good game by him.
Offense
The offense came out, and it looked at me like Thomas Brown’s influence was apparent right away. The Bears formations were tighter to the center of play, and it looked to me like there was a concerted effort to make as many of the players look the same out of a given formation as possible. As far as the course of the season is concerned, it may be too little too late. But it’s a good change.
It is very evident that the Bears worked with Caleb Williams on getting the ball out quicker this week. It looked to me like Williams was given some answers this week that Shane Waldron just never gave him.
It’s not a great surprise with all of the injuries, but the Bears offensive line wasn’t good today. Williams getting the ball out quick certainly helped them, and they did appear to handle pass rush stunts a little bit better than they have the last few weeks. But overall, this unit appears to be subpar, particularly up the middle.
It seems evident that Green Bay was concentrating a great deal on stopping DJ more. They were swarming to him and were certainly determined to limit his yards after the catch.
Williams getting the ball out quicker also had the effect of keeping the Bears from getting behind the chains as often as they had been the last few games. It was very important to keeping the offense on the field.
I love the fact that the Bears score one touchdown right before halftime and it’s like they won the Super Bowl. Packer fans must be dying laughing.
I like the fact that the Bears used Gerald Everett as a fullback in a situation other than the goal line where they were using Doug Kramer. They need to go to the power running game every once in a while and I really like that Thomas Brown wasn’t afraid to do that.
I expected the Packers to adjust to what the Bears were doing at halftime. But they really didn’t do very much different other than Rush the passer with more discipline. In particular, as Tom Brady pointed out repeatedly, they stuck in a zone defense despite the fact that the Bears often struggled against man defense in the past three games. I guess they decided that holding a team to 10 points in the first half is pretty much what you want. And they have a point.
I understand why they did it, but I’m not sure I like the idea of Caleb Williams running as often as he did. He didn’t get hit very much running the ball because he was smart about it, and he slid fairly often and stepped out of bounds. And it did give the Packers one more thing to worry about. But I’d rather see Williams not having to rely on running the ball so often. They had a particular tendency to do it on third and fourth down. Teams are going to pick up on that pretty quickly and start keying on and hitting Williams.
There were still quite a large number of miscommunications out there where Williams was throwing to one spot, and the receiver was running to another. The Bears have quite a bit to tighten up.
Miscellaneous
Kevin Burkhardt, Tom Brady, Erin Andrews, and Tom Rinaldi were your announcers. With the Packers winning 25 out of the last 28 games, I have to tell you that I get a little bit tired about hearing about how this is still a “rivalry”. Maybe they should wake the Packer fans up when the Bears don’t suck anymore, and everyone should just stop pretending in the meantime. XXXX
I heard lots of complaints about the unnecessary roughness call on Xavier McKinney at the end of the first quarter. But when they show the replay from the referees’ view behind the play, it sure looked like he had his hand on his back, and he gave him a shove. It may not have been a strong shove, but it was way out of bounds, and he had no business doing it. Soft? Maybe. But definitely a penalty. There’s no excuse for that.
We haven’t heard as much about punter Tory Taylor the last few games. I’ve noticed that teams have started to take his punts inside the 10 and run them back. Taylor sometimes outputs his coverage, and I think teams have picked up on that.
The Bears were 12 for 19 on third down today. The Packers were 1 for 6.
On the other hand, the Bears still had more than double the nu