Defense
- With injuries and backups all over the field on the Detroit offensive line, they still dominated the line of scrimmage. The Bears defensive line isn’t good enough yada yada yada.
- The Bears struggled to get pressure on Jared Goff with their four man rush yada yada yada. Unfortunately, as has been the case recently, the blitz often didn’t get home either.
- It looked to me like the Lions tried to pick on Nashon Wright. That has been happening with increasing frequency as well. The Bears may have to start thinking of playing Tyrique Stevenson more often in his place. That’s if Jaylon Johnson is healthy. Which he may not be because he got burned on occasion as well. Most of the passes that really burned the Bears were over the middle.
- Similarly, I was surprised how often C.J. Gardner-Johnson was covering Amon-Ra St. Brown. That’s a pretty clear mismatch and the Lions managed to maneuver the Bears into it time after time. Gardner-Johnson hasn’t looked good in coverage the last few games.
- The Bears played a lot of bend and don’t break defense but that meant that they were on the field a long time. The Lions dominated time of possession. There were times when the Bears were missing tackles and looked tired in the second half.
- When Andrew Billings jumps offside, he really doesn’t do it halfway.
Offense
- With head coach Ben Johnson being the Lions former offensive coordinator, the Lions obviously know the Bears offense better than any other team in the league. It was going to be interesting to see how the Bears handled that. There definitely were times when the Detroit defense looked like they knew what was coming.
- The Bears came out and ran the ball 6 of their first 8 plays. Unfortunately he forgot about the run the rest of the first half. It ended about 50:50 run to pass. I understand that the Lions secondary came in weak. But the Bears have to run the ball.
- The Bears seemed to want to attack the right side of the line with the running game. They certainly saw some success to that side.
- As is usual, the Bears found some success throwing to their tight ends. Colston Loveland has literally become the center of the offense.
- Caleb Williams played a reasonably good game. I thought the deep throw to DJ Moore that was intercepted was unfortunate. It looked like double coverage to me. But otherwise I thought he made good decisions and threw catchable balls. He eclipsed Erik Kramer for the most passing yards in Bears history.
- The Bears seemed to me to put Williams on the move just a little more often in the second half. The Lions were getting decent pressure and were keeping him in the pocket.
- Kudos to Theo Benedet. He stepped in for Ozzy Trapilo and did a pretty good job at left tackle today.
Miscellaneous
It would have been nice if the Eagles had played their starters and won their game against the Commanders this week. I actually thought they might be able to pull it off with their back ups. But no suchh luck.
The Bears won 2 division games this year and one of those was a miracle win against the Packers. Divisional opponents know you better than anyone and the other teams in the NFC North seem to have the Bears number. It would have been nice not to have to go to war against those same Packers next week.
Most fans outside the NFC North wouldn’t understand this because they consider the NFC West to be a superior division with better teams. But I would have felt a lot better had the Bears been playing an opponent from the West.