CHICAGO — Maybe the Bears did one thing right over the previous century. You really shouldn’t fire a head coach during the season.
Because that’s how a bad season turns into a national embarrassment.
It was just a month ago that some were seriously wondering if interim head coach Thomas Brown could keep the permanent job if the Bears won a few games under his watch and the offense continued to show improvements.
Through four games, not only have the Bears (4-12) not won under Brown’s watch, they haven’t even held a lead. Unlike the three previous games, that feat — taking one lead during a four-quarter football game — almost happened against the Seattle Seahawks on Thursday. So close.
I hope Matt Eberflus was somewhere warm sipping a fruity drink on Thursday night as Brown paid homage to him with his late-game game management. I sure wish I was.
Between us, with the PTO I have left, I don’t know why I came to the game at all, or why 56,000 and change showed up in the stands. But you never know if you’re going to see something you’ve never seen before and I suppose we all did.
There aren’t a ton of 6-3 finals in the NFL and this sure was one of them.
This is 4th time in last 90 seasons that the Bears lost a game when allowing 6 points or fewer. Also:
6-3 loss to Bucs 10/24/1999
6-3 to Broncos 12/5/1971
3-0 to Giants 11/17/1935— Josh Dubow (@JoshDubowAP) December 27, 2024
This loss marked the Bears’ 10th in a row. It’s only the second time in franchise history a team has lost this many consecutive games in a season, but it’s also the second time in the last three years this has happened. In 2022, Bears GM Ryan Poles was nakedly tanking. This year, he said on “Hard Knocks” it was “time to win” and he was bragging about how hard it was to make this roster and how deep his offensive line is.
The tank job in 2022 led to the only truly positive move of the Poles era thus far, the lopsided trade with Carolina. This season wasn’t planned. It was an accidental disaster. We’re used to those.
Thursday’s postgame locker room — Club Drubbed — was quiet when we walked in and really, beyond the minutiae of an NFL post-game, there wasn’t much to ask. We’ve been talking about this train wreck for months. The Bears players now sound more defeated than angry.
Safety Kevin Byard III, in his first year of the chaotic Bears’ experience, said he’s “never lost this much in my life. Period.”
Bears tight end Cole Kmet can’t say the same. He was on that 2022 team that lost its final 10 in a row.
“It’s been a long year,” said Kmet, who got zero targets. “A long, tough year and tough to see it end like this for being at Soldier. Definitely not the season we envisioned coming into the year.”
During the draft run-up process, people said Caleb Williams should refuse to come to Chicago and you know what, people were probably right.
Williams got sacked seven times Thursday — some of which were his fault, some were not — extending his franchise record to 67 with one game left. His franchise record streak of not throwing an interception ended at 353 passes on his last throw of the game. That was also the fourth-most consecutive passes without an interception during a season in NFL history.
The Bears lost every game during that streak. But even as Williams struggles in clutch situations, he’s still a reason to watch the games.
He made some incredible throws Thursday — including a touchdown pass to Rome Odunze that was waved off for a penalty — and he also made some head-scratching decisions.
“I didn’t play well enough,” Williams said. “I didn’t help put the team in a good position to win, a better position to win, and that’s what it is.”
He’s a rookie quarterback with a lot to work on who desperately needs Poles and his boss, team president Kevin Warren, to find him the right head coach to make sure his career doesn’t go off the rails. He could also use for Poles, an ex-offensive lineman, to actually fix the offensive line.
Good luck with that.
Next week is the season finale at Green Bay and in that rote kind of way that athletes answer questions they don’t want to answer, the Bears players talked about ending the season on a good note at Lambeau Field.
Good luck with that too.
The Bears have won just two of their last 15 games there since the Jay Cutler era kicked off in 2009. This year, they’re 0-5 in the NFC North and 0-8 on the road.
This is shaping up to be their second winless season in the division in the last three seasons, making Poles’ “We’re going to take the North and never give it back” quote from three years ago sound even more ridiculous.
Green Bay has already clinched a playoff berth but not only can the Packers backups beat the Bears, but I’m pretty sure St. Norbert College could give them a game.
From coaching to execution, this is one of the worst Bears teams we’ve ever seen and considering the talent on the roster, it’s even more shameful that they’re about to lose their 11th-consecutive game.
When asked how he’s processing so much losing, Williams described his response as: “Frustrating, annoyed, but learning, I would say.”
“I definitely think that this is going to be good for me,” he said. “Excited about this last game and then excited about the future.”
It wasn’t long ago that everyone in Chicago was excited about the Bears’ present. But, in a familiar refrain, now we’re just waiting for another season to mercifully end.
(Photo of Caleb Williams: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
