SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Whatever mental boost or fresh start the Chicago Bears thought they would get after a 10-day layoff from their latest fourth-quarter meltdown and nine days after coach Matt Eberflus was fired didn’t make it to Levi’s Stadium on Sunday.
The San Francisco 49ers jumped on the Bears from the start and never let up in a 38-13 drubbing. It was the Bears’ seventh consecutive loss, ensuring their 11th non-winning season in the last 12 years. It also guaranteed a last-place finish in the NFC North.
There’s no second-guessing the coach this time around. The Bears (4-9) were outcoached, outplayed and outclassed. Here are 10 thoughts after an eventful week and a dud of a ballgame.
1. There will be no shortage of top names attached to the Bears opening.
It will be a coveted job for those who want it — and for those who want the team to be interested in them for whatever leverage that could create elsewhere.
The Bears became the third NFL team to have a job opening when they fired Matt Eberflus on Nov. 29, joining the New Orleans Saints and New York Jets. When the last pink slip is handed out on Black Monday, there likely will be at least six and possibly eight or more teams seeking a new coach.
The Bears will have to sell their job based on more than just rookie quarterback Caleb Williams. Thomas Brown, who made the rapid climb from passing game coordinator to offensive coordinator to interim head coach, figures to receive an interview, although Sunday’s debut against the depleted 49ers wasn’t encouraging.
Generally, teams grant an interview to the interim coach who guided them to the finish line. How well the Bears play down the stretch and respond to Brown will factor into how seriously he’s considered. A decision can’t be based on a win total alone in just five games that won’t matter in the big picture.
Multiple sources indicate the Bears already have started talking to people behind the scenes, laying the groundwork for future discussions with candidates they want to be part of the process.
The news conference last Monday with President and CEO Kevin Warren and general manager Ryan Poles was a dud. No one wins one of those when the team is explaining why it sacked the coach with five games and two years remaining on his contract. But the Bears took a bigger loss than was required. Everyone has watched it.
The explanation was flubbed for why Eberflus was allowed to conduct a day-after-game Zoom session with media shortly before he was fired. Warren’s attempt to rationalize the timeline made about as much sense as Eberflus’ recounting of why he ended the Thanksgiving Day loss in Detroit with a timeout in hand. Just own it: “We screwed up. We need to be better.”
Warren made it clear that, at least behind the scenes, he’ll be leading the charge to hire the next coach. Poles will be the point man in the operation, but Warren has all the juice and he made sure everyone is aware.
“We’ll work that out,” Warren said when asked who would have the final say if the two didn’t reach a consensus on the hire. “Again, Ryan is the general manager. He’s head of football operations, so he would have the final say if it ever got to that point. But I’m confident that we will work through it.
“The good thing about it is so long as we keep the center of our decisions what’s in the best interest of the Chicago Bears, our players, as we go forward it will become clear as far as who is the person who should lead this franchise from a football standpoint and a coaching standpoint.”
This arrangement doesn’t come as a surprise. Warren makes sure the spotlight is on himself. The Bears held a news conference in April to introduce their lakefront stadium plan the day before an NFL draft they hoped would transform the organization. Fortunately, the selection of Caleb Williams has gone over better than that news conference.
One item that was left unclear is if anyone else will have a significant hand in the process. The duo was asked if the team would involve a search firm, which is more common when teams are hiring a GM than a coach.
“We have not made that decision right now,” Poles said. “We are going to lean on both of us and our entire organization, everyone in that think tank, and make sure we make the best decision.”
One longtime league executive believes that was a sign the Bears at least have floated the idea internally. Whether that’s true, who knows, but Poles didn’t dismiss the possibility and he’s pretty straightforward in these settings.
“That tells me they haven’t flushed it out yet, and that’s a stupid way to hire a coach,” the executive said. “That’s what colleges do.”
It’s certainly possible the Bears won’t involve a search firm, and between now and the end of the season, you’d imagine they will need to make clear how the process will play out. The more transparent the organization is about how the search will be conducted — not the ins and outs but the general parameters in place — the better chance the Bears have of earning faith with a skeptical fan base that has seen the team make poor hire after poor hire.
The news conference doesn’t matter nearly as much to potential candidates as direct communication with Warren and Poles — when the time comes for that — and intel they can gather from those they know who are tied in to Halas Hall. The Bears have an opportunity to emerge on the other side of this in a much better position.
Poles will need to be portrayed as a GM in a stable situation. The news conference didn’t project that message, but Poles wasn’t going to look gung ho and eager 72 hours after firing Eberflus, with whom he has a close relationship. That’s understandable. Poles needs to be on steady ground because that will be one of the first questions a coaching candidate has.
“I am definitely going to ask who am I reporting to,” the executive said. “What is that structure like? Who am I meeting with every week? Am I meeting with Ryan and then Kevin and then George (McCaskey) also? Tell me how many times I have to do that. I’ve got to run this football team.
“Who has final decision on the 53-man roster? Who do I have to go to when we are hiring assistant coaches? Who has that authority? If I get a bunch of, ‘Well, we’re all going to do it together,’ that says something to me as a candidate. That kind of confirms the press conference. OK, I really think that Kevin is my boss and I have to be good with that.”
The new coach will have to feel good about Poles because even if Warren wields the power, Poles is the one the coach will be sitting in a room with late at night, not Warren.
I don’t want to make assumptions about the length of Poles’ contract. But Eberflus was hired with a five-year contract, and it would make sense that Poles’ deal when he was hired in January 2022 was for the same length. Both were represented by former Bears defensive lineman Trace Armstrong.
You can’t rule out the possibility Poles will receive a contract extension as evidence he’s on solid ground and to have the new football duo aligned. That’s just my speculation at this juncture and there’s no salary cap for the front office, so we’re only talking about McCaskey money here.
Every candidate will see untapped potential in Williams. The Bears’ top choice will need to believe Poles and his staff can get the roster right around the quarterback. Poles has to sell himself, and that’s an area where he probably can do well: meeting face-to-face with head coaching candidates.
The Bears have to be humble in the process. They have to be forthright about where mistakes were made. They have to be convincing that they get it. They were embarrassed on national television in Detroit and they’ve lost a series of games in the closing moments in ways you can’t imagine a team doing in such a short period of time.
They have to convince the best candidates for the job that, after a grueling midseason stretch and awkward news conference, they have Halas Hall in order. They must communicate that message and they have about four more weeks to contemplate precisely how to accomplish that.
Two sources said a plus here is Warren likely will have the green light to spend as necessary to make the right hires — and that’s plural because a head coach is only as good as his assistants.
“You hate saying the decisions are going to set the trajectory of the franchise over the next 10 to 15 to 20 years,” Warren said. “This is one that will.”
Dream big.
2. The Bears have to fight perception here, one that has been shaped by a couple of decades of largely mediocre play.
Bears chairman George McCaskey speaks before introducing new general manager Ryan Poles and coach Matt Eberflus on Jan. 31, 2022 at Halas Hall. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
They have to convince head coaching candidates Halas Hall is not infected with elements that work against winning football on a day-in, day-out, week-in, week-out and year-in, year-out basis. They have to fight the stigma that they’re in the same vicious cycle of losing that cripples organizations like the Cleveland Browns, Jacksonville Jaguars, Las Vegas Raiders and New York Jets. Since 2000, the Bears have been a little bit better than the Washington Commanders on the field without as much messy stuff entangling the franchise off the field.
As one longtime observer of the Bears told me many years ago, “Any sustained success will be a happy accident” at Halas Hall. His point was that when you’re there long enough, get to know enough people and see how the operation runs, eventually you come to realize how the sausage is made.
The McCaskys are well-intended owners who, in the last 15-plus years, have poured a ton of financial resources into the organization. They’re not cutting corners when it comes to spending in an effort to field a winning product. They’re not meddling in football decisions and imposing their will when it comes to choices for the roster or direction of the team. But when they’ve had to make critical decisions, they’ve made the wrong ones and those they have empowered have followed with their own mistakes.
To the observer’s point, the Bears have not had consecutive winning seasons since 2005-06. You have to go back to the heart of the Mike Ditka era — a five-year span from 1984 to 1988 — for the last time the franchise had three or more consecutive winning seasons. That was more than 35 years ago.
The Lions, long the doormat in the division, are rolling with a league-high 11-game winning streak, having already clinched their third consecutive winning season under Dan Campbell. Powered by Barry Sanders, Detroit had three straight winning seasons from 1993-95. The Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings have done a heck of a lot more winning in that span.
So, when President and CEO Kevin Warren championed the Bears’ “great tradition,” he was referencing what for most was the team’s history when their parents or grandparents followed the Bears. They have had two championships since 1946 and have appeared in two Super Bowls. That more recent tradition of the Bears — over the last 3 1/2 decades — has been one of mediocrity and that’s something Warren and Ryan Poles — and anyone else attached to the coaching search in any manner — has to convince top candidates will not enfeeble the organization moving forward.
Poles talked about working to build sustained success when he was hired and there’s no question that was the pitch he made to George McCaskey when he was a candidate. It’s possible Poles will be able to guide the Bears toward this goal. If Caleb Williams turns out to be the right quarterback — I mean RIGHT — the team has solved what had been mission impossible. While it’s hard to believe in the midst of this losing skid, the rest will be easier to put in place.
In talking with numerous people across the league over the last week to gauge what the search could look like and how attractive the coaching job will be, some were a lot more bullish on the Bears than I expected.
I’d resist the urge to put too much stock into Sunday’s loss just as I would have made the point that a win after a coaching change in a lost season doesn’t mean a whole heck of a lot. The Bears are not going to solve anything in the stretch run here. There are young players and veterans on expiring contracts who have stuff to show but this project is going to take an offseason of the right choices to get things back on track.
Every single decision, even the smallest ones, will matter until the season kicks off next year because the Bears are fighting more than perception, they’re battling a tradition of mediocrity as well.
3. There’s no Matt Eberflus to kick around for this one.
The boost the Bears were hoping to get, the one they hoped would be natural after a loose week at Halas Hall, never showed up.
No one was rejoicing that Eberflus lost his job. Players were fed up with the losing and questioned — publicly — some of the decisions he made. Rightfully so. But the change that led the Bears to elevate interim offensive coordinator Thomas Brown to interim head coach seemed to energize the team.
Brown has a straightforward delivery. He says what’s on his mind and he tries to avoid the clutter. He’s direct in his messaging and with expectations and they hoped the spark he’d provided on offense would carry over to the entire team.
That didn’t happen. The 49ers, who had been outscored 73-20 in losing their previous two games, scored on four of their first five possessions to mount a 24-0 lead. They had eight plays of 20 or more yards in those five possessions and marched up and down the field at will. At halftime, the 49ers had a 319-4 advantage in yards, the ninth-largest difference in the NFL since 1991, according to the Associated Press. The Bears had one first down.
It’s too early to say — and there’s not a lot of time remaining — but I wondered when the Bears elevated Brown to replace Eberflus if it was risky. My thinking was that adding more to Brown’s plate — he had gone from passing game coordinator to offensive coordinator — could take away from his work with quarterback Caleb Williams.
“I’ll start with what I addressed with the team,” Brown said. “We got our butts kicked. There’s no other way to say it. We’ll always be straightforward, honest, and open about the things that transpired. We have to do a better job of putting a better game plan on both sides of the ball, so we can execute better and continue to challenge our guys to be at their best.
“Also, encourage those guys and also demand that we still stay unified. That’s a grown man’s business. There is no lay down or quitting in our football team, which I do love. We have to do a better job of trying to find ways to start the games faster. Particularly on the offensive side of the ball.”
In the locker room, players echoed the sentiment.
“(Brown) kept it real with us,” defensive end Darrell Taylor said. “We got an old-fashioned ass whipping and we didn’t execute the plan that we wanted to. He kept it honest with us and that’s what we need somebody to always be honest with us and let us know when we’re not doing what we’re supposed to do the right way. I think he hit it on the head.”
It was stunning from the standpoint that while the Bears have been reeling, they had come off three narrow losses to teams with much better records than San Francisco (6-7) and they really believed a breakthrough was around the corner.
“I thought we were going to come out and play better than we did today, honestly,” Taylor said. “I truly did. I think that we just gotta go back, study the film and then make the corrections from this week so we can actually really bounce back next week and, you know, actually come up with a win and finish this season out the right way.”
Said cornerback Jaylon Johnson: “We don’t expect to play poorly. We keep losing. Nothing is going to change until we win.”
4. The 49ers are a shadow of the team that reached the Super Bowl last season and got to the NFC Championship Game in the two years prior to that.
They’ve been talking about this season in past tense, almost as if it’s over, and this was a get-right game for them in the winnable NFC West. The 49ers cruised to victory and did so without some pillars on the roster — left tackle Trent Williams, running back Christian McCaffrey, wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk, defensive end Nick Bosa, defensive tackle Javon Hargrave and linebacker Dre Greenlaw.
Quarterback Brock Purdy has had a rough season, certainly compared to last year, and this was a turn-back-the-clock game for him. He completed 20 of 25 passes for 325 yards and two touchdowns. He did it with ease throwing into huge windows.
The 49ers averaged 11.9 yards per pass attempt, the third-highest allowed by the Bears since 1990. That’s less than a month after the Green Bay Packers averaged 14.4 yards per attempt at Soldier Field.
It was big play city for Purdy, who completed six passes to tight end George Kittle for 151 yards, the most ever by a tight end against the Bears, eclipsing the 149 yards Rob Gronkowski had for the New England Patriots in a 2014 game at Gillette Stadium.
The threat of the run opened up big lanes for Purdy to throw and the Niners still had success on the ground with 131 yards led by rookie Isaac Guerendo’s 78 and two touchdowns. What they did was influence the eyes of second-level defenders — linebackers Tremaine Edmunds and T.J. Edwards and nickel cornerback Kyler Gordon. With play-action and misdirection, the 49ers pulled those defenders downhill and then ran off defensive backs at the third level. That created defined throws in the middle of the field with opportunities for run after the catch. It’s why Kittle looked like he was 25 years old, not 31.
“We felt like they have very reactive linebackers and we felt like a misdirection could help us out in the run game and get them going laterally,” 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk said. “We got things clicking early and that is something we had stressed — starting fast and keeping that energy up the whole game. Not taking our foot off the pedal and talking a lot. It paid off.”
This is what Kyle Shanahan’s offense looks like when it’s clicking and that’s the shame of things for the Bears because San Francisco was without Williams, the 11-time Pro Bowl performer, Guerendo is the fourth running back and Aiyuk is far and away the best receiver the team has. But Purdy was in control, had clean feet and the ball came out quickly and accurately and the Bears never really found an answer.
“They were giving us a lot of misdirection from play action to the few runs they had and then it was just elephants on parade and us not reading run to pass properly,” Darrell Taylor said.
Maybe the Bears thought because Purdy has had an injured right arm this season that the 49ers would lean heavily into the running game, something the Bears have struggled to stop. If so, that explains falling for the play action and some of the misdirection. They just got eaten up and fell way too far behind to play catch-up.
5. It does not matter who the play caller is, the Bears cannot find a rhythm offensively early in games.
When the defense can’t hang in there for the team as a whole to find its way, it’s a recipe for a blowout. Life is tough enough in the NFL for rookie quarterbacks. Make them one-dimensional and, well, you can start the engines for the buses early. It’s time to go.
Caleb Williams kept his streak of pass attempts without an interception alive — pushing it to 255 — and he was lucky linebacker Dee Winters dropped what should have been a pick six in the first quarter. Williams finished 17 of 23 for 134 yards and besides the slow start, the Bears also failed to get anything going in terms of explosive plays.
Williams made a handful of nice throws. He put a little too much heat on a seam ball to Rome Odzune, but he was in a bad spot after the Bears were down 24-0. I don’t care who is calling plays at that point, you’re severely limited because you’ve got to drop back time and again and that is where the sacks — seven of them — piled up. Some of them were coverage sacks. The Bears have a serious issue here because not only can they not score early in games, they’re not even getting first downs to at least influence field position and rest their defense.
“If I had the answer, I would’ve already fixed it,” interim coach Thomas Brown said. “But I think again, just being able to understand how to sell ourselves into a game, being able to stay on the grass, convert on third downs and keep some drives going is going to be the biggest part of it. That will be a point of emphasis for us moving forward.”
Whatever adjustment was made at halftime helped. The Bears came out and went 70 yards on 16 plays to score on a 4-yard pass to Rome Odunze. The drive took 9 minutes, 4 seconds, and it’s hard to muster a rally when you’re moving that slowly.
“The most important thing is first and second down efficiency, such as not taking sacks on first and second down,” Williams said. “Whatever the case may be, taking a sack goes into the category that obviously matters. In those situations, first and second down, you don’t want to take sacks. That makes third down the time to make the play, and we didn’t do that today.”
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Sacks on third down were a killer too. Williams was sacked on third down on four consecutive possessions in the first half. He’s now been sacked 56 times, the most ever for a Bears quarterback in a season, with four games to go.
San Francisco safety Talanoa Hufanga, who came out of USC in 2021, the year before Williams got there, came away impressed though.
“The way he can sling the rock around is unbelievable,” Hufanga said. “There is a reason he was the first pick, for sure. Obviously, it is a guy I have watched a little bit more because he went to USC. For me, just watching him and his growth these last few years has been awesome.
“He is on a good trajectory. For them, it’s just finding the right pieces. You know, as much as they critique the six-game losing streak coming into today, he only really lost his last three games off of seven points total versus some really good teams, teams we have lost to as well.
“For us, it was making him uncomfortable. I hate to say that because he is a friend of mine, but for us, it was making him uncomfortable back there and our defense — our defensive line especially stepped up. It was coming up with different disguises to try to get him off the spot. You never want to give a rookie quarterback something easy where what he sees is what he gets. And so for us, it was late rotations, it was coming out from depth and getting deep and sometimes just holding a look when he maybe thought we were going to move into something else. You gotta change it around and you have to stay on your toes and making him just think made him hold the ball a little bit more. That helped our pass rush get home.”
6. Rome Odunze became the first Bears rookie wide receiver to have two touchdown catches in a game since David Terrell in 2001.
The Bears would like to see Odunze blossom a little with four games remaining. He had four catches on five targets for 42 yards and did a nifty job of getting his feet down in the back corner of the end zone on the 4-yard touchdown with cornerback Charvarius Ward all over him.
On his 14-yard touchdown, Caleb Williams made a really nice touch pass just over the reach of linebacker Fred Warner. Williams climbed the pocket with Odunze finding the open space needed.
“On the first touchdown, the defenders on the motion were confused and Rome ran a great route by not colliding,” Williams said. “I just gave him an opportunity by putting the ball on the back pylon, which is something we practice all the time. He went up and made a great play by getting both feet down.
“For the second one, knowing the type of player that (Warner) is on their side of the ball, they end up being in a two-high shell while playing Cover 4 behind it, I believe. The running back was going one way and we started off with three receivers to that side of the field, on the right side. Rome ran a great route and froze Fred, who had his eyes on me in the back. Rome ran a great route, made a great catch.”
Odunze is up to 45 receptions with 585 yards and three touchdowns. His average of 13.0 yards per catch leads the team. If he could get near 65 receptions and 800 yards, that would be a solid rookie season for an offense that has had well-documented issues with other playmakers. It will take a big finish.
“Rome has been very consistent from Day 1, like I’ve said before,” Thomas Brown said. “I think as far as his approach to the game, he is super mature. He does a really good job in meetings and taking notes, being detailed, doing exactly what we asked him to do, and I’m glad he showed that when we had an opportunity today.”
7. Strong safety Jaquan Brisker can be designated to return from injured reserve beginning this week.
He’s been out with a concussion since the Week 5 victory over the Carolina Panthers on Oct. 6 at Soldier Field, an injury suffered when he had a violent collision with tight end Tommy Tremble. The NFL fined Tremble $17,083 for unnecessary roughness/use of the helmet but Brisker got the worst of the deal.
The Bears were optimistic he wouldn’t miss too much time after he stayed home from the London game and the bye week that followed, but Brisker simply has not been able to clear all of the hurdles in concussion protocol, which is spelled out by the league, to return. In mid-November, the team made the decision to place Brisker on IR and remove any week-to-week pressure. Every player responds differently to every concussion and Brisker just wasn’t able to make it through protocol before the IR move.
We’ll have to see if the team starts the 21-day practice window for Brisker. Because the Bears do not play until next Monday night at Minnesota, the team will not get into its normal week of practice until Thursday, and right now that is scheduled to be a walk-through.
Brisker has missed eight games — he missed two as a rookie in 2022 and two more in 2023 because of concussions — but I’m told it is possible he’s nearing a return to action. Because he’s been sidelined for more than two months, it could take a little time to get his conditioning to the level required to play. Brisker might need multiple weeks of practice to get back in the mix and it’s possible the Bears use some kind of rotation for him initially.
Safety Elijah Hicks has missed the last two games with a right ankle injury. He’s probably close to being in the mix also because if the injury was deemed to be one that would require much more time off, he probably would have landed on IR.
8. Thomas Brown said something interesting Wednesday in his first news conference since being elevated to interim head coach.
The former running back, a sixth-round draft pick by the Atlanta Falcons in 2008 who spent parts of the 2009 season and 2010 offseason with the Cleveland Browns, said he might have had a longer playing career if he had chosen a different position.
Brown never appeared in a regular-season NFL game. He dressed for the 2009 season finale in Cleveland but didn’t get off the sideline. All his game action came with the Falcons in the 2008 preseason, when he suffered a leg and groin injury on an illegal horse-collar tackle that cost him his entire rookie season.
“I have more of a defensive mentality even as an offensive guy,” Brown said. “I probably should’ve kept playing defense instead of playing running back. Might’ve still played a little bit longer. That’s a personal note that y’all don’t care about.”
Bill Ballard, Brown’s coach at Tucker High School in the Atlanta suburbs, vouched for that.
“I tried to get him to play corner when he went to Georgia,” Ballard said.
Ballard has an idea of what he’s looking at. He had “19 or 20” players, by his count, go on to play professional football, including former Minnesota Vikings cornerback Asher Allen, who was a tailback and cornerback at Tucker just behind Brown. Ballard also coached Bradley Roby, a cornerback the Denver Broncos drafted in the first round out of Ohio State, at Peachtree Ridge in Suwanee, Ga.
“I told TB, ‘You’d be playing a long time at corner,’” Ballard said. “He was a great cornerback for us too. Thomas really loved Barry Sanders. That was his hero. He was (No.) 25 as a freshman, and as a sophomore he got No. 20 and wore it all the way through and at Georgia. He looked up to Barry Sanders. That was kind of his dream.
“I want to say he had 35 or 40 offers going into his senior year, and I think any of those schools would have let him play anything he wanted to.”
Ballard recalled a game against Griffin, which had a massive 6-foot-6 tight end.
“I have a picture of Thomas somewhere, I wish I could pull it out and send it to you,” he said. “The tight end jumped for a pass and Thomas is like 5-8, maybe 5-9 (he measured 5-foot-8 3/8 at the combine). Thomas’ head was even with the tight end’s head jumping for the ball in this photo that was in the newspaper. He’s intercepting the pass.
“Not only that, Thomas would come up and knock the crap out of you. He was physical. He could run. He wasn’t scared of nothin’. I believe he could have played anywhere. He was the best player we had on a team that had eight Division I players.
“I would agree with Thomas 100%. He is one of those guys, when you watch him run, he runs on his whole foot. He can turn and shift and change on a dime. He would have been a Darrell Green-style corner. That’s the change of direction he had. I don’t doubt he could have done that at all.”
Ken Rucker was the running backs coach at Georgia during Brown’s freshman season in 2004 and said the Bulldogs knew they had an incoming prospect with enough talent to line up on both sides of the ball.
“We talked about Thomas as a person, No. 1, and we knew that he was aggressive but we also had the mindset that we needed that personality at running back,” Rucker said. “We needed him on offense at the time. We had stout defense and we never practiced him on that side but knew he was athletic enough and aggressive enough and tough enough that he could have played cornerback. Our need was at running back and he filled it in a big way. He was really good.”
9. Since the pick six cornerback Tyrique Stevenson had in the season-opening victory over the Tennessee Titans, he’s gotten noticed for the wrong reasons.
Stevenson was the NFC defensive player of the week for the opener. He lost his focus and his assignment on the Hail Mary at Washington and now he’s been fined for tripping Detroit Lions wide receiver Jameson Williams while on the sideline during the Thanksgiving Day game at Ford Field.
The NFL fined Stevenson $19,697 for the action on a play where Williams drew a 15-yard penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct. Williams tossed the football at Stevenson after he went to the ground on the Bears’ sideline.
Stevenson is appealing the fine.
“I already have (a hearing) set up for next week,” he said. “I don’t think it’s necessary or even fair. Just all I can do is appeal it. All I can do is speak my piece and move on from it.
“I didn’t trip him. You can zoom in on it really as much as you want. You can try to find something. I didn’t trip him. If I would have tripped him, it would have been very noticeable.”
Replays show Stevenson moved his right leg as Williams was running out of bounds.
“I am pretty sure what happened was he had his appeal for throwing the ball at me and he made his case very clear that he was tripped,” Stevenson said. “They went back and looked at the footage and now they’re trying to find something. All I can do is appeal it and I’m doing that next week.”
10. Rookie punter Tory Taylor had himself a game.
He had a gross average of 52.7 yards on six punts with a net of 49.0, the third-highest net by a Bears punter in a game (minimum four punts) since 1960.
Taylor’s gross punting average of 48.7 yards is the best in team history (1.5 ahead of George Gulyanics at 47.2 in 1947) for players with a minimum of 30 punts. It was a good example of what Taylor can do on a nice day when he’s not battling the wind at Soldier Field.
10a. With Travis Homer going out with what the team called a head injury, the Bears could have two running backs in concussion protocol. Roschon Johnson missed the game with a concussion. That could mean a larger role for Darrynton Evans next week as the team doesn’t want D’Andre Swift on the field every down.
10b. Brock Purdy ducked out of a sack when he avoided Montez Sweat on the final play of the first quarter. Fortunately, linebacker T.J. Edwards was there to clean up the play and get Purdy down but that is the kind of season it’s been for Sweat, who has one sack in his last five games. Sweat limped off the field at one point and returned with his left ankle taped.
10c. The Minnesota Vikings opened as a 7-point favorite over the Bears at Westgate SuperBook in Las Vegas for next Monday night’s game at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
