Quick Comments: Bears at Chiefs 9/24/23

I’m not going to spend a lot of time documenting this one. There just isn’t a lot to learn. I’m sure you understand.

Defense
1. The Bears played a lot of zone early in the game and Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs tore it to shreds. The Bears eventually started playing more man coverage but the performance wasn’t much better. With Eddie Jackson already out and Jaylon Johnson, Tyreek Stevenson and Jaquan Brisker all out at some point during the game, the Bears woes were compounded. Eddie Jackson is already out with a foot injury.
2. The pass rush wasn’t good. That didn’t help the pass defense.
3. Its fair to say that the Bears lost the line of scrimmage. It wasn’t just Mahomes passing. The run defense was not up to the standard of the first two games.
4. The first target I saw for Darnell Mooney was with 4:30 left in the third quarter. Something isn’t right there.

Offense
1. The offensive line struggled so badly that it was hard to pick out individual performances. With a totally revamped interior of the offensive line they Bears had their moments running the ball inside which surprised me a bit. But the pass protection was pretty bad across the board. I remember seeing Ja’Tyre Carter literally getting run over on the inside. Justin Fields was under constant pressure.
2. Greg Olson spent a lot of time slamming the Bears for not allowing Fields to run but to my eye they did allow him to do it more. There were roll outs, there were read option plays, there were some designed runs. He was more apt to pull the ball down and break the pocket. The problem is that you have to have more than that out of your quarterback. Fields has to be able to play from the pocket.
3. Fields got the opportunity to throw some bombs when the Bears got behind. Some of them were good throws but the Bears were having a hard time putting it all together and the connections weren’t being made.

Miscellaneous
1. Keep an eye on the coaching staff. It almost certainly won’t happen during the year but they’re getting nothing out of what talent exists on this team and hey got nothing out of them last year. I know that they’re talent deficient but they should be better than this. The staff is already in deep trouble with 14 more games of this on the horizon.
2. Honestly I spent some the second half just praying that the Chiefs would pull Mahomes out of the game. It would have been terrible to see him get hurt in a crap game like this. They pulled him just before the end of the third quarter.
3. It’s very early in the season but with the Bears looking this bad, today was already a potential disaster for the Arizona Cardinals. Apparently the players didn’t get the message that they were tanking as they beat the Dallas Cowboys. The Carolina Panthers lost and are now 0-3. The Bears own Carolina’s first round draft pick, which already looks to be a contender to be in the top 5.