As the Chicago Bears close out the most frustrating of seasons Sunday against the Green Bay Packers, the focus quickly will turn to a coaching search that could stretch to the Super Bowl or beyond.
It’s just the second time in 16 years (2019 was the other) the teams will play a noon game at Lambeau Field, as the historic rivalry wasn’t appealing enough for prime time this season. The Bears and Packers didn’t play a night game in 2023 either after playing at least one prime-time game in 17 consecutive seasons (2006-22).
The game has little meaning for the Bears (4-12) other than an opportunity to end their 10-game losing streak and an 11-game skid versus the Packers. Green Bay has motivation and is expected to play all of its healthy starters. The Packers (11-5) need a win and a loss by the Washington Commanders, who play at noon at Dallas, to earn the NFC’s sixth seed and avoid a wild-card game against the second-seeded Philadelphia Eagles.
The Bears will have to improve to be more attractive for national audiences in 2025, and that hinges on hiring the right coach and staff, overhauling the offensive line and upgrading the defensive line and pass rush.
It looks like a long to-do list, and nothing will work for the long haul if they don’t get the right coach. But if — and it remains an unknown — Caleb Williams is the right quarterback for the Bears, they will have solved what has been the most difficult part of the equation for them.
The rest — as challenging as it may be to find three new starters for the O-line, an upgrade opposite defensive end Montez Sweat and a better interior player to pair with nose tackle Andrew Billings — should be a heck of a lot easier.
The Bears failed, however, to develop Williams properly in his rookie season. The offense was a work in process during training camp, dominated on a near-daily basis by the defense. And it was rudderless at the start of the season.
It wasn’t recognizable as any type of offense when the season began, and that’s on everyone involved in the decision to hire coordinator Shane Waldron, it’s on former coach Matt Eberflus and it’s something the Bears, try as they might, never could overcome.
Say what you want about former offensive coordinator Luke Getsy — fired last January after a series of meetings at Halas Hall in which the Bears determined they would go forward with Eberflus — but at least you could watch on a week-to-week basis and understand how they were trying to make it work with quarterback Justin Fields. You could get a notion of the general game plan, and it made sense.
This season has been a mishmash of plays, and the Bears have been completely directionless in developing Williams as a franchise quarterback. Go back to Week 1, when Gerald Everett, signed as a role player and pass-catching tight end, got more snaps than starter Cole Kmet. Not one person offered an explanation for why or how this happened.
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The Bears have gone from No. 1 in the league in rushing in 2022 and No. 2 last season to 25th entering Week 18, averaging 103.2 yards per game (4.08 per carry, which ranks 26th). Players say the team, despite retaining run game coordinator/offensive line coach Chris Morgan, got away from aspects of the ground game that were successful the previous two years.
Why? No one can explain.
Fields propped up the rushing numbers the last two years, but the Bears had other elements on the ground that worked and all of that was seemingly lost with a lot of the same linemen remaining. Passing game coordinator turned offensive coordinator turned interim head coach Thomas Brown, a former running back, wasn’t able to jump-start the ground game after Waldron was fired.
The passing game has been choppy. Williams has four 300-yard passing games, and the Bears totaled four in the previous four seasons combined. But he also has had five games with fewer than 150 yards, including a wretched 122-yard effort last time out in a 6-3 loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Dec. 26 at Soldier Field.
Wide receivers talked before the season about having a race to 1,000 yards. Unless DJ Moore has 120 yards against the Packers, the offense won’t have a single receiver reach that threshold. Moore hasn’t gotten to 120 in a game this season and has topped 100 yards only twice, against the Carolina Panthers and in the first meeting versus the Minnesota Vikings.
Kmet will finish with fewer than 50 receptions unless he has five in Green Bay. He has only six receptions over the last five games. Everett has gone missing since the opener. Wide receiver Keenan Allen has provided about what should have been expected at age 32 — 67 catches for 719 yards and a team-high seven touchdowns — while Rome Odunze has shown upside in his rookie season, averaging 13.8 yards per catch with 715 yards and three touchdowns.
But the Bears never could put the parts together. Slow starts that have crippled their ability to play complementary football will remain an unsolved crime. The Bears have scored only 20 points in the first quarter, the fewest in the league.
The offense has 26 false starts, tied for third-most. Had it been just one player, it’s an easy problem to solve. It was across the board, and cadence issues at the line of scrimmage were a factor.
That’s a small but important detail the Bears never nailed down before the season, and I’d imagine that’s just one element of what general manager Ryan Poles was referencing before the Seahawks game when he discussed the offense’s struggles on the WMVP-AM 1000 pregame show.
“I believe it stems back from training camp,” Poles said. “It’s just some of the things that either weren’t addressed, they weren’t detailed enough, whatever that is.”
Williams has flashed more than enough for the Bears to feel good about his future. He has remained upbeat during a grueling losing streak. He has shown enough to be a draw to potential head coaching hires.
But the season as a whole hasn’t been what anyone hoped — for the team or the quarterback. Put Williams’ statistics side by side with those of the New York Jets’ Aaron Rodgers, and Rodgers has had a better year. And by all accounts this season has been a disaster for the four-time MVP.
Rehashing where it all went wrong is something the Bears have had weeks and weeks to do. They need to find a head coach with a vision — someone who can attract the right staff to come with him — and set out to rebuild the offensive line.
There’s a long, long way to climb in the NFC North, which put three teams in the playoffs with the winner of Sunday night’s Vikings-Detroit Lions game to finish 15-2 and the loser 14-3. The checklist of things the Bears have to accomplish is long and they can’t gloss over anything as it appears was done this past spring and summer.
If Williams is the right quarterback, the rebuild might not be as arduous as it could be. But the Bears have to land the right coaching staff. That’s far more significant than Sunday’s outcome — and something they haven’t done in a long time.
Scouting report
Edgerrin Cooper, Packers middle linebacker
Information for this report was obtained from NFL scouts.
Edgerrin Cooper, 6-foot-2, 229 pounds, is a rookie from Texas A&M drafted in the second round (No. 45). He is fifth on the team with 70 tackles and has 12 tackles for a loss, 3½ sacks, six QB hits, one interception and four passes broken up despite missing three games.
Cooper is coming off a season-high 10 tackles last week in a loss at Minnesota. He had three tackles for a loss and has seven TFLs over the last three games.
“At A&M he was used to fit his athletic profile and they used him to generate a lot of edge pressure, play as an overhang and work in space,” the scout said. “You see some of that in his game, but the Packers are playing him more like a stack, professional inside linebacker. I like him there because he’s got really good pursuit speed and he’s gotten much better. At the beginning of the season, he was run-and-hit, see-the-ball, get-the-ball. Now he’s reading his keys faster in terms of diagnosing run and pass and he can track the ball down and run it down. He gets there in a hurry and he’s a very good tackler.
“They’re using him a lot more on pressures and stunts because he’s fast downhill and he’s got decent size and closing speed. Getting better in coverage and starting to make plays on the ball. So if you look at what they’ve done in terms of finding this guy in Round 2, I like it. He’s got first-round athletic traits. Maybe that’s because of how he was utilized in school. Credit to Green Bay. They found the modern linebacker you’re looking for that can play in space. Good player.”
