I have a lot of feelings about last night’s game, and most of them aren’t great. Still, I can’t help but feel optimistic about the future in Chicago. Lost in the Bears hype is the undisputable fact the Houston Texans are a damn good football team, a playoff team last season, and boasts one of the best passing attacks in the NFL, and the Bears lost by one score in their building on Sunday Night Football last night. Through all of the correctables and even the ugly, that fact alone has me only slightly disappointed by last night’s outcome.
The Good From the Bears Loss to the Houston Texans
Caleb Williams (Sometimes)
You can hate this if you want, but I don’t care. Caleb Williams did some good things last night, and if I’m going to drag him for the things he did poorly (and I am), then I’m going to shine a light on what he did well. This isn’t a film study (that comes tomorrow), but I have rewatched the game in the All-22 format this morning, so this isn’t just my gut based on the live watch last night.
Clearly, the coaching staff wants Williams to play in structure, and that’s fine. He showed last night that he’s capable of it, and his tape at USC shows it plenty. However, the offensive line must be significantly better for that game plan to work.
Williams was pressured in under 2.5 seconds on 11 dropbacks on Sunday night and sacked seven times. Why is 2.5 seconds important? That’s the designed time a route should take to be open. Williams was 15 of 18 for 95 yards when throwing the football under that threshold. That’s good for a CPOE (Completion Percentage Over Expected) of +4.2 percent.
When he had the ball longไer than 2.5 seconds, he was 8 of 1ﷺ9 for 79 yards and two interceptions (-11.2% CPOE).
You can argue the depth of the targets until you’re blue in the face, but that’s not a Williams issue; that’s a (Bears OC) Shane Waldron issue. The playcalling remains puzzling, and actually took a step backward this week.
DJ Moore
Moore is the No. 1 wideout in Chicago for a reason; he’s darn good. He caught six passes for 53 yards last night and was targeted 10 times. I said last week that he had to be a focal point in the offense against the Texans, and Waldron got it half right. He was a big part of the game plan, but much of that plan involved Moore getting the ball at or behind the line of scrimmage and expecting him to make things happen in the open field.
Fifty-two of Moore’s 53 receiving yards came after the catch. Using him as a ball carrier out of the backfield or in the screen game is fine, in moderation. Let’s get some more deep looks for him moving forward. Even if it’s to create space in the intermediate for another route by pulling the safety or a zone corner away from the space between the has mark and the boundary for an out route or one of the middle option routes Waldron seems to be obsessed with.
The Defense
There’s nothing to say here but give those men their flowers. They were a bit spotty early when the Texans scored most of their points, and Nico Collins looked like Terrell Owens, but they made the adjustments on the fly and held one of the most talented offenses in football to 19 points in their building. That’s a winning effort, becoming commonplace for this unit.
The Special Teams
If we never see Velus Jones Jr. again, that’s fine. DeAndre Carter has done an excellent job in the return game, and if Khalil Herbert is only going to get two touches out of the backfield, he can be a contributor there, too—just food for thought. Cairo Santons was perfect, and Tory Taylor did an excellent job flipping the field all night.
The Bad
Caleb Williams (Sometimes)
Like I said, when Williams had the ball longer than 2.5 seconds, things got dicey for the rookie quarterback. He missed some downfield shots and forced up a couple of prayers, two of which were intercepted. Last week, Williams didn’t do anything to lose the game for the Bears. This week, he did, even though he had no help around him. I would have liked to have seen Williams stay within the game plan and protect the football in the second half. Instead, he pressed, and it didn’t work out.
That’s going to happen when you’re getting drilled repeatedly. Houston blitzed Williams on 41.7 percent of his dropbacks, which was the highest blitz rate in a game under DeMeco Ryans. The blueprint is there for opposing teams, and Ryans leaned into it. Until that offensive line is better, everyone will be beefing up their blitz numbers when Chicago’s on the schedule.
D’Andre Swift
D’Andre Swift carried the ball 14 times for 18 yards last night, good for 1.3 yards per carry. Swift’s long on the evening was seven yards, which means that he gained just 11 yards on his other 13 carries, and I’m going to spare you the math on what the per attempt clip looks like there.
I’ll say this: Waldron’s determination to continue running the ball outside when the offensive line was late to their block all night because of the noise and silent snap count did Swift no favors. Still, he was terrible. You can’t tell me that Khalil Herbert and Roschon Johnson couldn’t have done this for much less money.
Rome Odunze
I will venture to say that when I re-grade my instant grades mid-week, there will be few and far between where I give someone a drastically different grade than they originally received. More often than not, the tape provides much-needed context to things I already believed to be accurate, but sometimes, it shows us an entirely different thing. Rome Odunze’s performance last night and my initial grade will be one of those exceptions to the rule.
Credit to Rome for toughing it out and playing most of the snaps, let alone playing with an MCL sprain, but he might as well have taken the night off. He dropped a touchdown in the end zone that was absolutely catchable upon review, and he didn’t get much separation all game, which could be due to the knee injury, but if that’s the case, he shouldn’t have played.
The Ugly
Shane Waldron
I’m not ready to pack Shane Waldron’s bags for him just yet, but I’m getting pretty damn close, and that’s saying a lot after two games.
As I said earlier, the play calling was somehow worse on Sunday night than in Week 1 against the Titans. Going backward from the Tennessee game is an absolute no-no. In my Caleb Williams film study last week, I gave Waldron credit for doing things that played into Williams’ strengths (i.e., naked boots, rollouts, etc.). This week, that was all out the window.
DJ Moore’s route package was wrong. Cole Kmet was more involved than last week (easy bar to clear) but still not as involved as he should be, and I’ll be happy if I never see Gerald Everett again. Why are we force-feeding Gerald Everett targets when we have a top-10 tight end on the roster? Furthermore, I would love to hear Waldron’s explanation on the Everett screen out of a three-by-one formation on the outside.
Shane Waldron has been a massive disappointment thus far. While I’m still hopeful that he will find some rhythm in the next few weeks, I’m definitely disgusted by his first two performances as the offensive play-caller in Chicago.
The Offensive Line
I’ve already cited the blitz and pressure percentages and success rates from Sunday’s loss to Houston, so there’s no point in repeating them. The offensive line is a major problꦫem right now, and Bears GM Ryan Poles has to be on the phone trying to bring in some external help.
Matt Eberflus’ Game Management
is a terrific defensive play-caller, and seems like a good locker꧂-room presence, but he leaves so much to be desired in pretty much any area outside of that. His grasp of what an NFL offense should look like is entirely nonexistent, and the game management last night wa꧑s atrocious.
