Well that was a short lived high. Last week at this time I was super excited that even though the Bears QB and head coach are basically rookies, they managed to win 4 in a row while making some mistakes. Well causing 15 turnovers in 4 games will do that and cover up a ton of mistakes. Today they ran out of that turnover luck so their mistakes were amplified.
First let's start with QB Caleb Williams. He is still holding onto the ball too long. Today they showed a stat that Williams is holding on to the ball for the third longest amount over the past 10 years. He is holding for an average of over 3.15 seconds before releasing it. To me this screams of him processing what he is seeing a bit too slowly. It would also explain why it seems he does not see wide open receivers. Luckily for Williams he has excellent scrambling instincts and a rocket arm so he can make up for a lot of his rookie mistakes. But man he made a huge one today. With time ticking away at the end of the first half, Caleb Broke the pocket for an amazing run. He ran toward the sidelines for 22 yards. But instead of going the one more yard to easily get out of bounds, he slid down in the field of play. This caused his team to waste a timeout... that they desperately needed as their field goal team rushed onto the field to try a 58 yard field goal without adequate time for the kicker or holder to prepare. Predictably, the kick fell short and the Bears got nothing out of the nice plays Williams made on the drive. Like all Bears fans, all I can do is hope that Williams figures out how to process more quickly and make quicker decisions while throwing accurately. its not like we have another choice. It is Caleb or bust. That is how it works when you take a quarterback first overall in the draft. If he is a bust, it will set the franchise back a decade... and considering how bad they have been, that would be quite a ways back.
Now onto head coach Ben Johnson. I actually have more faith in him than I do in Caleb Williams (but I still have a lot of faith in both). But he is still growing and learning as the general of the entire sidelines. We all know he is the best offensive coordinator in football. But that is only part of his job now. he has to split his bandwidth between calling the offense and managing every other aspect of the game... including clock management. And wow he has a lot to improve on when it comes to that. I honestly wish the Bears would hire someone to just be in charge of clock management so Johnson did not have to worry about it. With the Bears down 7 points with about three and a half minutes left, the Ravens had the ball. For some reason, Johnson started using his timeouts then. This meant that if the Ravens got one first down, the game was basically over. But if he waited until after the two minute warning, he'd have two bites at the apple to try and stop them. So with about 3:10 left on the clock, the Ravens faced a 3rd down and 7 yards to go for a first down. If the clock was ticking away, the Ravens would have most likely run the ball there to run the clock. They may not have gotten it and they would have been forced to punt. By using the timeouts and leaving so much time on the clock, the Ravens had an incentive to pass on that down. Even if they didn't get the first down, time wasn't really a big issue there. There was so much left that it didn't matter if they brought the clock down to 3 minutes or 2 1/2 minutes. So not only did Johnson use his timeouts too early, the use of them encouraged the ravens to pass on third down. Of course the Ravens got it and the game was basically over. They eventually scored a touchdown to set up the Bad News Bears 2 minute drive.
Again the Bears made an amazing play when DJ Moore made a sensational 1 handed catch and burst down the sidelines for 42 yards. he then inexplicably leaped forward for 1 more yard instead of heading out of bounds. that decision cost the Bears about 30 seconds and basically made the unlikely comeback impossible. The Bears never even scored from inside the 5 yard line after Moore's mistake.
This team has way too many mental mistakes. part of that is being young, but part is also coaching. The Bears have the second most penalties in the league. Many of them are presnap penalties that destroy the flow of the offense. It has come to the point where I get nervous when the Bears have a first and goal from the five yard line. It is almost guaranteed they will commit some kind of penalty and end up having to kick a field goal. It's maddening!
Let's see what next weeks title will be. Man I hop it is more positive. These ups and downs are driving me nuts.