Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune has thoughts on the botched end of the game yesterday:
[head coach Matt] Eberflus mentioned re-racking the second-down play a couple of times and that is where it gets super confusing. The only thing I can think of is the Bears had two calls. Maybe there was a pass and the QB draw and based on the look the Lions presented, they checked to the draw. Perhaps they liked the pass call that was an option on third down if they re-racked it. I’m only guessing here because it was impossible to walk away from Eberflus’ news conference feeling like you understood what happened.
I’m sorry I didn’t post game comments yesterday but Thanksgiving out of town with my family is a bit chaotic to say the least. Concentrating fully on the action just wasn’t going to be an option.
Nevertheless, everyone came to a focus at the end, and everyone had an opinion. As the only Bears fan in the house, the only comment that I had to make was, “Welcome to Chicago”.
Well, that’s not entirely true. It was clear to me that, at its core, when it’s all said and done, this was the result of bad coaching. Which isn’t a great revelation, either.
All that aside, Eberflus’s apparent attempt at obfuscation isn’t terribly surprising. The guess here is that he was trying to protect Caleb Williams, a rookie quarterback who took too much time to get what was probably a simple play off and blew it at the end. There might be more to it than that, but that’s probably the major factor.
When this season began, I tried very hard to temper expectations for this team for precisely this reason. Admittedly, this has been a bit worse than even I thought. But predicting 10 or more wins, which I heard very often from members of the media, was just not a realistic expectation on a team when you are starting a rookie quarterback.
Last-minute comebacks are great, and it’s nice to know that Williams can execute under those circumstances. But let’s not forget that the Bears also put themselves in those holes, and Williams was at the center of it all simply by the nature of the position. Let’s remember what that offense looked like halfway through the second quarter yesterday.
Yes, there are quarterbacks out there who transcend all of that, and that would have been wonderful. Perhaps with better coaching (or possibly any coaching), Williams could have done it. But it was always more likely that Williams was going to have an up-and-down season for an organization that is most often up and down all on its own. The only thing that you can do is ride it out.