Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune writes about the travails of the Bears defense as the season winds up.
The Bears rank 28th in total defense, 28th against the run and 21st versus the pass. About the only category they’re doing well in — and it’s a huge one — is takeaways, in which they still rank No. 1 with 32. They have a league-high 22 interceptions but have allowed 57 pass plays of 20 yards or more. Only the Baltimore Ravens (61) and Bengals (59) have more.
Takeaways will be more difficult to collect against better teams in the postseason. The Bears have six in the last four games, but three were interceptions against struggling Cleveland Browns rookie Shedeur Sanders.
This is a better defense right now than the one the Lions crushed for 52 points in Week 2. Whether it’s ready for playoff football remains to be seen.
What was Allen’s message to the players?
“We’ve all got to be better,” cornerback Jaylon Johnson said. “He took accountability for the part he played, and, as players, we took accountability for our part. We just talked about being better.”
And just like that, the Bears moved on to the Lions for the regular-season finale Sunday at Soldier Field. It’s going to be challenging to go a lot further if things aren’t tightened up.
First, the good news is that the Bears aren’t the only team going into the playoffs with a major weakness. Ted Nguyen at The Athletic provides plenty of analysis of the problems that teams like the Rams, Texans, and 49ers are having with various aspects of play as they enter the postseason.
The team that is most notably missing from the list in the article is the Packers. Before Austin Booker sacked him with poor tackle height and concussed him, Jordan Love was playing with about as much confidence as I’ve ever seen from him. The Packers have been up and down but they could be dangerous in the playoffs. At minimum, they always seem to be ”up” for the Bears.
Second, Biggs emphasizes in the article about how poor the defense has been the last two games against the Packers and 49ers. The bad news, and more to the point, is that the Bears defense has been a problem since well before that. Despite the turnovers that the Bears have been getting, I’ve been wringing my hands, waiting for a good team to play well and expose this unit since the season began. I could clearly see that they weren’t good enough for an extended playoff run, and certainly anyone who knows what they’re talking about has said the same thing.
The Bears have had an entire season to find ways to overcome deficits in personnel along the defensive line and haven’t been able to do it. If they haven’t “tightened things up“ by now, I don’t think it’s going to happen. The only real hope that they have is that the deficiencies in the other teams that they face turn out to be as bad as theirs.
