One of the lasting memories of the 2024 Chicago Bears season will be fans chanting “Sell the team!” in the final two minutes and as they exited Soldier Field on Thursday night after the team’s 10th consecutive loss.
The Bears still had the ball. They had crossed midfield. They still had the ability to stop the clock and they were trailing the Seattle Seahawks just 6-3 when the disgruntled crowd picked up on what White Sox fans did at Rate Field during a record-setting season of futility. There was no mistaking what the message was as the Bears offense tried to engineer a game-winning drive.
The opportunity fizzled out. The Bears lost 6-3 to fall to 4-12 with one game remaining before the team launches headfirst into its coaching search. Quarterback Caleb Williams took seven sacks in what was another lousy performance by the offense. The Bears are now 98-3 since the start of the 1950 season when they limit the opponent to six points or fewer.
Here are 10 thoughts after the latest loss that featured familiar clock-management issues.
1. It’s hard to explain the final 5 minutes, 12 seconds.
The Bears have a tough time getting chunk plays when they’re in a “gotta have it” situation, and they are not poised in clock- and game-management situations.
That’s nothing new. Interim coach Thomas Brown was thrust into a tough spot. It’s a lot to handle, and the Bears didn’t get it done when they had a chance to mount a drive, score a touchdown, end a brutal losing streak and kill whatever chances the Seahawks have of making the playoffs. Not exactly the kind of meaningful football the Bears imagined playing in this prime-time event back during the summer, but they’d do anything to get out of this vicious cycle.
Instead, they found another rough way to lose. Caleb Williams took some big hits, including one to the throat near the end that partially explained a bunch of time coming off the clock, and his streak of consecutive pass attempts without an interception came to an end on his final throw of the game when Riq Woolen came down with a ball Williams had to put up for grabs because the Seahawks brought the house on fourth-and-10. More on the streak a little later.
The Bears tied their season low with 11 first downs (Week 1 versus Tennessee, Week 10 versus New England) and managed only 179 yards, getting just 3.1 yards per play against what I think is an average Seahawks defense, a little above average against the pass. Outside of the 13-play, 76-yard field-goal drive in the second quarter when the offense had four first downs, the Bears didn’t get more than one first down on another drive until the end, when they took over on their 11-yard line with 5:12 to play.
A zone read by Williams and a 12-yard draw by D’Andre Swift quickly moved the ball to the 30, and what’s sort of remarkable here is that the Bears snapped the ball on third-and-2 from their 38-yard line with 2:54 remaining. We can get deeper into the clock-management issues, but they were not moving with tempo and urgency when you consider 2:18 went off the clock on four plays before that snap.
Williams scrambled for 1 yard to make it fourth-and-1, and when fill-in left guard Jake Curhan, who replaced the injured Teven Jenkins, was called for a false start, Brown sent the punt team on the field. Tory Taylor had enjoyed a heck of a night to that point. Of seven punts, five landed inside the 20 and four were fair catches, with no return yardage against him. The Bears had three timeouts and the two-minute warning, but there was only 2:14 left.
Fans erupted. Brown called timeout during the dead ball and sent the offense back on the field.
“It wasn’t confusion at all,” he said. “I just changed my mind. I think being able to use Tory as a weapon, and we still had I think it was 2:16 on the clock, still had our three timeouts, plus the two-minute warning. The way our defense had been playing all day, possibly have a chance to go flip the field and force the three-and-out, get a shorter field and have, like, a last end-of-the-game drive. That was my thought process.
“Over the course of that, I changed my mind and said, ‘Let’s go for it now’ and sent the offense back on the grass.”
Williams came up with a superior play, connecting with DJ Moore as he came across the field for a 14-yard gain on fourth-and-6. That moved the offense to the Bears 49-yard line but the next snap was fumbled, leading to a sack.
It was quickly third-and-14, and Williams hung in the pocket for an eternity before scrambling to the right and firing an off-balance dart to Rome Odunze for 15 yards to the Seahawks 40-yard line.
That play, the kind of highlight maneuver Williams can make, started with 1:15 remaining. The Bears didn’t snap the ball for the next play — an incomplete pass — until 37 seconds remained. Thirty-eight seconds had drained down.
“I got hit in the throat,” Williams said, referring to a shot from Seahawks linebacker Boye Mafe. “I don’t know if the coaches saw me down there after the big completion to Rome. Even though I got hit in the throat and the face, got to just get up and go and run down and snap the ball.”
Brown used another timeout when the clock was stopped after the incompletion at 37 seconds. The Bears wouldn’t gain any more yards, and they were down to fourth-and-10 from the Seattle 40 when protection couldn’t hold up. Woolen made the pick on a play in which the Seahawks had nine defenders up on the line of scrimmage.
“How do I answer it without giving away like trade secrets?” Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said. “It’s something that we been practicing, and we haven’t really called it in situations like that. We have (different) versions of the blitz that we’ve called but not that particular version. So something we’ve had and we’ve been preparing for. Our guys were excited about getting to that particular call. Man, I mean, you just call something you haven’t executed and it’s basically the season is on the line. Just shows, hey, our guys can handle it. They’ve earned that confidence to call those types of high-leverage plays.”
There’s no one person to blame here. The Bears were bad on offense all night. It just wasn’t at the end. This was a rough watch. Williams took a lot of the blame — more on him in the next item, including an interesting perspective I gathered from the Seahawks locker room. Brown didn’t handle the timeouts correctly, but before the Bears even got to that, they were taking way too long to get from play to play. That’s coaches, players, all of them.
There’s no grand takeaway from the team’s first loss when holding an opponent to six points or fewer since a 6-3 defeat at Tampa Bay on Oct. 24, 1999, the second start of Cade McNown’s career.
“I don’t put too much into it,” tight end Cole Kmet said. “It seemed like we were going for the win there, which I’m totally fine with. At this point, nothing to lose. Just trying to go for the win. Came up short. Again.”
That has become the defining story of the season. It has been a trying season for everyone at Halas Hall. No one is ever prepared for the sheer volume of disarray the team has faced. I ranked the worst losing streaks of six games or more I’ve covered. Maybe you disagree on the order.
The defense played very well — especially after the Seahawks popped some early runs — for the first time in a long time. Taylor was terrific. The offense had no rhythm, no pace, no continuity, and that was a killer.
2. Former Bears center Olin Kreutz made a good point on the WSCR-670 AM postgame show Thursday night.
Caleb Williams intuitively knows the right thing to say during trying times at the podium, or someone has done a really good job of coaching him up.
Williams took an extra-large dose of the blame after completing 16 of 28 passes for 122 yards. After losing 46 yards on seven sacks, the Bears had just 76 net passing yards. It was only the third time in the last 10 seasons the Seahawks had seven or more sacks in a game. Defensive tackle Leonard Williams had two and five other players had one apiece.
Williams made nice throws to DJ Moore and Rome Odunze to move the chains on the final drive that ended with the interception, and the rookie flashed his athletic ability late in the second quarter when he made a play that maybe three or four other quarterbacks in the league can pull off. He was rolling hard to his left on third-and-10 from the Seahawks 17-yard line. He was at the 27 when he ripped a fastball to Odunze, who was about 7 yards deep in the end zone. So, the ball traveled 34 yards in the air and was pretty much a rope. But left guard Jake Curhan was called for holding — he got caught out of position trying to stop blitzing linebacker Uchenna Nwosu, and the touchdown was taken off the board.
Williams had some decent runs — he gained 37 yards on five carries — but it felt as if the Seahawks were a step ahead of him a lot of the time. The ball didn’t come out with rhythm very often. There were a couple of drops early and some misplaced passes, and then Williams ran into some pressures or tried to escape by retreating and lost more yardage.
“I’ve only been here, this is only my first year,” Williams said. “The (fans’) frustrations go way longer back than I’ve been here. My job is to go out there and win games. And we don’t focus on the outside noise. The fans are going to cheer and maybe boo sometimes. And you can’t react to that. It’s not something that we react to. We have a job to do. And sometimes you don’t do so well on the job some days and some days you’re pretty consistent. Some days you play a great game.
“Today was one of those games that I think we played two sides of the ball today pretty well, special teams, and defense. And then offense, we didn’t play well. There were miscues. There were stupid sacks that I was taking, losing 10, 14 yards, which is frustrating. But I will say that I will definitely take the heat for this one just because some of the situations that I put us in, like I said, that sack that I took that I didn’t need to take, which put us — we were empty and I brought a guy from the boundary. Just throw it over the guy’s head. And you’re still playing, obviously you want to get a positive play there. But in that sense, it’s a positive play. So got to be better.”
Williams has struck me as being pretty candid most of the season. He seems to give thoughtful answers. He hasn’t come across as beaten down by the losing or the hits that have piled up. He seems eager to learn and improve, and he was ticked off after this game because he felt he should have been better. In the big picture, that’s probably a good sign for the Bears.
Clock management is on everyone, and Williams will need to be more efficient in the huddle next season. I’d imagine that will be a goal he sets for himself. He’s naturally going to be better at the line of scrimmage.
I was chatting with Seahawks middle linebacker Ernest Jones IV about the timeouts the Bears used at the end and how it seemed chaotic when he shifted the conversation to Williams. Jones began the season with the Tennessee Titans, so he was at Soldier Field for the Week 1 game and had played against him once already.
“They came back after the timeout (on fourth-and-5) and ends up they make the play, so it worked out for them,” Jones said. “I tell you, that kid over there is going to be special. He’s going to be truly special.
“I’ve played him twice this year. From the first game of the year to now, he’s way better. Way better. That kid is going to be special. I don’t mean to call him a kid because he’s a grown man, but he’s going to be special, 100%.”
I asked Jones how what he saw in film during preparation and then on the field differed from the Week 1 game the Bears won despite their offense.
“Decision making,” said Jones, who made six tackles Thursday. “He’s starting to get more comfortable. There’s a lot going on right now down low with his O-line. He’s making a lot of plays with his feet. Once they’re able to get a good O-line and get him protected, man, he can make all the throws. When he gets out of the pocket, he’s dangerous.
“There are only a few quarterbacks in the league that can escape out of the pocket and get the ball out and downfield, and he’s one of them.”
Jones isn’t the first player to praise Williams this season. They were interesting comments, but there’s a long road ahead for Williams and the offense in the offseason. Williams does a good job of owning it, and it seems genuine. If it isn’t, like Kreutz said, he has been well-trained.
3. At least Tyrique Stevenson is putting his yapping to good use on the field now.
It’s going to take some big, game-changing plays for the cornerback to put the Hail Mary play at Washington behind him. And I say that while recognizing the other 10 Bears defenders still should have been able to get the ball on the ground in that situation. But Stevenson had a knucklehead moment and he’s going to pay the price for it.
For the second week in a row, he drew a penalty from an opponent. In this game, Stevenson said something to set off Seahawks wide receiver DK Metcalf after a Zach Charbonnet run late in the second quarter. Metcalf was called for two personal fouls on the play. Only one was enforced by rule. This came a week after Stevenson drew a 15-yard penalty against Detroit Lions wide receiver Jameson Williams. Those two had a run-in on Thanksgiving Day at Ford Field when Stevenson tripped Williams as he went out of bounds. That’s the NFL’s version, anyway. Stevenson was fined for the play.
Stevenson has a way about him for getting under the skin of opponents, which can be helpful as long as he keeps himself in check.
“He’s definitely up there (as a trash talker),” fellow cornerback Jaylon Johnson said. “They look for him on tape. He happened to get one and hold his composure today. Last week, Jamo has got some smoke with him. He’s able to get some good penalties.”
What’s more telling is Stevenson went from rotating playing time with Terell Smith for seven straight games (after the Hail Mary) to playing 100% of the snaps on defense. The Bears had a rotation in which they would swap out every two defensive series, and now Stevenson is back full-time.
“It was definitely out of the ordinary,” Stevenson said. “Definitely didn’t expect it (last week). Everybody kind of found out right before the game. It felt good to be out there for a whole game. I had kind of gotten used to the rotation and it got comfortable. But it did feel good getting the whole game.”
I asked him if it was a little bit like the running back position. A lot of times those guys talk about getting in a rhythm and getting a feel for the game with more snaps.
“That makes perfect sense,” Stevenson said. “But this is the NFL, and you’ve got to adjust on the fly every play. You’re playing the coordinator and the player, and every play is like the first play. You’ve got to adjust.”
The Bears were obviously hoping Stevenson would take a big step forward in his second season, and that hasn’t happened. He had some strong moments early in the season in which there were signs of improved growth, communication, film prep. I talked with secondary coach Jon Hoke about it all before the game at Washington. I think Stevenson has been battling to stay locked in since then, and it has been just that for him — a battle.
“I had my ups and downs,” he said. “I feel like I did my job. I haven’t given up over five touchdowns. I don’t think I’ve had a bad season. If that one plays leads you to dictate I had a bad season, shame on you. It is what it is. I feel like I had an OK season despite the Hail Mary.”
He knows it hasn’t been good enough, and I think he realizes Year 3 is going to be critical. A new coaching staff will evaluate him, and he has to assert himself as a pro from Day 1.
“Just continue being me,” Stevenson said. “I have to take the next step in my career. I had a good rookie season. I had a good second season with mistakes. Now it’s time to come back and just show how much room I have to grow and where my mindset is with the game and my mindset for taking care of myself so I can perform on the field.”
Performing on the field is what it’s going to take. He can move past the Hail Mary, but like I said, it’s going to take some big plays in big moments.
Probably should point out the Seahawks actually overcame the 15-yard penalty on Metcalf. It pushed them back to second-and-16 from their 24 after the two-minute warning, but they were able to get in position for a 50-yard Jason Myers field goal, the final score of the game.
4. Usually when a season that began with promise is grinding to the end, all eyes shift to the draft.
With the Bears moving closer to jumping into the hiring cycle, everyone is interested in seeing where that leads — and for good reason. The Bears have to nail this.
Understanding that — and the weeks of coverage that will be dedicated to the process — let’s skip ahead to draft season with the Bears likely to pick ninth, 10th or 11th in Round 1, with a slight chance they could move up to eighth. The 2025 NFL draft is April 24-26 in Green Bay.
It’s wild to think the Bears could wind up 4-13 and pick as low as ninth in the first round. That ought to tell you how much bad football more than one-quarter of the NFL has played this season.
The bad news is that it’s not considered a loaded draft and it might not be the kind of quarterback draft that will push talent down the board for teams shopping at other positions — such as the Bears.
I talked with a longtime talent evaluator and a national scout on a variety of draft topics.
“It’s shaping up to be a better offensive-line class than we originally expected, but it’s still not what it was last year,” the front-office man said. “There’s not any real slam-dunk, top-half-of-the-first-round players. A lot of the top guys in this class on the line are Day 2-graded players.
“It’s a wide-open year overall in the first round. I bet there are a lot of teams that have 10 or less first-round grades right now. In an average year, you’re usually in the mid-teens, and in a good year you’re in the low to mid-20s. This is not a great draft at the top.”
The national scout, speaking on the draft as a whole and not specifically about certain positions, also was down on the top of the board.
“The top half of the first round is not going to be the same as it’s been,” he said. “There’s still some quality talent that is worthy of being picked in Round 1. But I don’t think there are any elite players that really stand out this year.
“There’s no one that’s super fired up to be picking in the top five. You weren’t good this year and there’s no one that is going to be your savior. You’re not looking at a generational player or someone that is going to come in immediately and make a noticeable difference. Obviously if you don’t have a quarterback and you get one that hits right away, that’s great. I’m not sure there’s that guy, either, in this class. It’s not a great year to be a bad team.”
That can change. The process is just getting cranked up, and after the college playoffs there will be the all-star games and NFL combine. Players can improve their draft stock over the next couple of months. Others can fall. At this point, few are unlikely to have a significantly different view of the first round come April.
The Bears will have two picks early in Round 2, with one coming from the Carolina Panthers, and the evaluator said that might be a sweet spot to target a lineman or even two.
“They would be in a good spot there,” the front-office man said. “Where it’s the thinnest is at center. Not a good draft class for that position.”
He said there is a decent crop of guards if the Bears want to focus on that position. Alabama’s Tyler Booker and Ohio State’s Donovan Jackson stand out, and Georgia’s Dylan Fairchild is considered a strong prospect, although he has played through some lower-body injuries this season. Arizona right tackle Jonah Savaiinaea is viewed by many as a guard in the NFL, and his size — 6-foot-5, 336 pounds — makes him intriguing.
As far as edge rushers, the front-office man said a decent number of prospects are worth digging in on, but “I wouldn’t feel super confident in any of these guys right now.” He noted Penn State’s Abdul Carter has had a strong second half of the season and said Georgia’s Jalon Walker, Tennessee’s James Pearce and Texas A&M’s Nic Scourton, a Purdue transfer, will get buzz in the coming months.
“Those are names that will be up there, but I think they all have something to prove,” the evaluator said. “There is some depth at this position. There just isn’t the player you know is going to be a star.”
5. Thomas Brown passed on a 58-yard field-goal attempt and chose to go for it on fourth-and-10. That was the right call.
The Bears probably needed a couple of yards to be just inside of Cairo Santos’ range. I’ve gotten a good handful of questions in the mailbag about Santos’ range, with folks comparing him to some of the newer kickers in the league with stronger legs. The one thing most people have overlooked is that a 60-yard field goal at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, isn’t the same as a 60-yard kick at Soldier Field in December.
The Bears chose not to have Santos attempt a 58-yard kick, and Brown said the kick line was somewhere between 52 and 55 yards. Before we go any further, here are the all-time attempts from 58 yards and longer at Soldier Field.
- Jake Bates, Lions: 65 yards, miss (last week)
- Eddy Pineiro, Panthers” 59 yards, miss (Nov. 9, 2023)
- Matt Prater, Lions: 59 yards, good (Jan. 3, 2016)
Prater holds the Soldier Field record for the longest field goal. Brown didn’t want to attempt a kick from 58 yards, and pretty much no one tries from that distance at the stadium.
“The winds were kind of swirling back and forth a little bit,” Santos said. “It’s really whatever the (coaches) want. The adrenaline kind of takes over at the end of the game sometimes, and you can kick it farther. It’s whatever they believe. They see me working pregame and at practice. You just never know.”
The shame of the deal is the Bears were running low on time. Even if they had converted the fourth-and-10, they might have had to kick, just from a better distance. At that point, there was nothing to lose. If Williams would have had a half-second more on the all-out blitz, maybe the Bears hit a home run. Who knows?
“In my head, I was kind of hoping we were just going for the win,” tight end Cole Kmet said. “I’m going to be honest with you. To tie it up, based on how we were going offensively, I totally understand it at that point (going for it). Just trying to go get a win there. Obviously we couldn’t get it done.”
Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said his line didn’t stretch to 58 yards, and his kicker, Jason Myers, is known for having a powerful leg.
“Our line was a little bit tighter than that,” Macdonald said. “You have to be ready for a fourth-down call, but … you never know if they’re going to try one. We had a call ready on a field-goal block as well.”
6. Kyler Gordon wants to see evidence that he was actually down. The Seahawks were holding their breath.
It turned out to be a missed opportunity for the Bears offense after a takeaway. The Seahawks were on the move late in the third quarter when Geno Smith connected with tight end Pharaoh Brown on a quick out. Right away, he was surrounded by defensive end Austin Booker, linebacker Tremaine Edmunds, Gordon and cornerback Jaylon Johnson.
Gordon managed to get the ball out, but at one point both of his knees were on the ground.
“Apparently someone touched my leg,” Gordon said. “They’ve got to show me the replay before I believe it.”
Gordon popped up and jogged to the end zone, and at first the play was ruled a touchdown even though no officials followed him on the play, and the Seahawks pretty much just stood around, just like Gordon’s teammates.
“It’s sad,” Gordon said. “I haven’t had a touchdown since high school.”
Here’s the thing: Brown didn’t have to touch one of Gordon’s legs. If any part of Gordon touched any part of Brown while he was securing the ball and on the ground, Gordon is down.
“In the moment I was really, what was the term you used?” Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said. “Was I worried? Yes, pretty consistently worried about stuff.”
Added Smith: “That was an interesting one. I didn’t get the full view of it but I did see Pharaoh. He’s a tough dude, man, and going to try and run five, six people over if he can. I thought he got down. Also heard a whistle blow and then I saw the ball in the other guy’s hand and he’s running down the field. It was just a different situation there.”
The Bears played much better defense than they have recently. They kept the top on an explosive passing offense. They rallied to the ball. They played like they have when they were competitive the last two seasons.
“Response,” Gordon said. “As we know, our defense has a certain standard and we’ve showed it. So, obviously syncing a little bit. Just getting back on the guys to get back right. It’s just important to know what we can do and just go in there and execute. We did way better today.”
The standard took a leave of absence a while back, and I don’t think it returned here. But I do credit defensive coordinator Eric Washington and the players for a better effort. They limited DK Metcalf and Jaxon Smith-Njigba and sacked Smith three times. It was a solid showing. Too bad it wasn’t a defensive touchdown.
7. There’s no telling how a new Bears coaching staff will view Jonathan Ford, but barring an injury, he has a shot to land a job somewhere next season.
You may have never heard of Ford before. I didn’t know who he was when the Bears signed him off the Green Bay Packers practice squad on Dec. 11. He was a seventh-round pick out of Miami in 2022 and was stuck in Green Bay for nearly three full seasons without getting on the field in a regular-season game.
Ford is 6-foot-5 and is listed at 338 pounds. He told me he’s more like 345. Five days after walking into Halas Hall for the first time, he had one solo tackle, four assists and a tackle for a loss in 25 snaps at Minnesota. He had one tackle the next week in 17 snaps against the Detroit Lions and one tackle against the Seahawks.
I’m not suggesting the Bears discovered a star, but men his size who can move don’t just pop up out of the blue, and now Ford is going to have some legitimate NFL game tape for the Bears and rest of the league to evaluate.
Ford had no inkling of the Bears interest until his agent, Tony Paige, called and explained the opportunity. He had a chance to sign with the Bears’ 53-man roster for the final four games of the season. He would be leaving a team bound for the playoffs but would have a chance — finally — to play.
“It was a no-brainer,” Ford said. “I was eager for the opportunity. I just took it.”
Ford thought he was going to break through during training camp and preseason, when he logged five tackles in 72 snaps. But he suffered a pulled calf muscle in the preseason finale, and the Packers placed him on injured reserve.
“I thought I had a chance to be in the mix,” he said. “Felt I was right there on the threshold. People around the building told me I was right there. Stuff happened and I had to adjust to the new norm at the time.”
After the Packers activated him from IR in October, they waived him, and when he went unclaimed, he was re-signed to the practice squad.
“I had to get on the field,” he said. “It was about getting an opportunity.”
The Bears told him he could play for them. All he had to do was get a crash course on the terminology and be ready to strap on his helmet. It all happened so quickly he didn’t have any family from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., or friends in attendance at the game in Minneapolis.
“But there were a lot of people rooting for me,” he said. “Family, friends, old coaches. My phone blew up. It was a good feeling.”
What the future holds for Ford is unknown. He’s going to have to stay healthy, and once there’s some tape on him for offensive linemen to study, he’ll have to adjust a bit. With his size, he should have scheme versatility, and finally the Packers’ well-hidden secret is out.
“I didn’t know him before this,” defensive line coach Travis Smith said. “A guy with his size and his movement skills for his size and his physicality, yeah. Just look at the situation and him being in his third year and having not played, and they had been able to keep him on the practice squad. All of a sudden come in and play four, five days later against Minnesota, that was huge.”
Smith agrees there’s enough out there for Ford to have a real shot somewhere after the season.
“No matter what system he is in when you have big men who are physical and can move, it’s not the old days of Gilbert Brown,” Smith said, referencing the longtime run-stuffer in Green Bay. “Those guys have been kind of phased out of the league because there’s a need for a pass rush and the ability to play the perimeter run game. But Jonathan is a big man, and you see him overlapping tackles for loss, knocking back O-linemen, getting out of the stack. Plays with great effort. He’s a good find.”
One other thought regarding Ford. It speaks to the incredible depth — and to a degree the health — the Packers have had on their defensive line to keep him under wraps for so long without needing to use him. I had a chat with a pro scout with another team who told me he tried to talk his bosses into claiming Ford off waivers in October.
“He’s got a little juice for a big guy,” he said. “Interested to see if he can do anything. I like the move, taking a shot on him.”
8. The league has protocol for the hiring cycle for head coaches and the timing is specific, especially when interviewing candidates employed by playoff teams.
There’s a lot to wade through here, but if you want to get an idea the timeline, I have reviewed a copy of the league’s hiring policy.
Before the conclusion of the regular season: Teams can conduct in-person or virtual interviews with internal candidates or candidates not currently employed in the NFL.
Jan. 6: Teams with an open head coach position may begin to request interviews with candidates employed by other clubs.
Notes
- Interviews with employees of other clubs must be conducted virtually through the conclusion of the divisional round of the playoffs on Jan. 19.
- Interviews with employees of non-playoff teams are prohibited until the third day following that coach’s season ending. That means Jan. 8 for teams that play on Jan. 4 in Week 18 and Jan. 9 for teams that conclude their season on Jan. 5.
- Clubs working to fill a head coaching vacancy must conduct an in-person interview with at least two external candidates who are persons of color and/or women.
Requirements for interviews of coaches working for clubs that are in the postseason
- Virtual or in-person interviews cannot exceed three hours. This is a new rule that was adopted in May.
- In-person interviews must be conducted in the city where the coach works or at a location that is agreed upon by that coach’s employer.
- For coaches on teams that have a bye in the wild-card round, virtual interviews may begin three days after the Week 18 finale (Jan. 7 or Jan. 8) and must be completed before the conclusion of the wild-card round.
- For coaches on teams that play during wild-card weekend, virtual interviews may begin three days after the wild-card game and must be completed before the conclusion of the divisional-round games on Jan. 19.
Jan. 20: Teams can conduct in-person or virtual interviews with candidates working for teams that have been eliminated from the postseason.
Jan. 27 through Feb. 2: Second interviews — in-person or virtual — are permitted for candidates working for teams that will participate in the Super Bowl. Teams cannot perform an initial interview during this period.
Feb. 10: Interviews with coaches on teams that participated in Super Bowl LIX can resume.
9. In the social media world we live in, there’s a tendency for recency bias to overshadow everything we evaluate.
It’s either the best or the worst, and rarely does the conversation include much perspective or any nuance. In evaluating the current 10-game losing streak, it’s not the worst I have seen. Like I said in the first item, maybe you disagree.
In 24 seasons, this is the fourth losing streak of six games or more that I’ve chronicled. I’m only counting in-season losing streaks, not stretches that span multiple seasons. This one is bad, and there have been so many twists on the roller coaster from the Hail Mary failure at Washington to other fourth-quarter meltdowns to a couple of games for which the Bears didn’t show up. They have been playing from behind weekly since Matt Eberflus was fired.
Here’s how I would rank the losing streaks, from worst to, well, not the worst.
1. 2002: Eight-game losing streak following a 2-0 start.
This tops the list because of the expectations entering the season. The Bears were coming off a 13-3 season when they were the surprise of the league, and Dick Jauron was named Coach of the Year. The team opened with narrow wins over Minnesota and at Atlanta and was off to a great start in Week 3 against New Orleans.
They jumped to a 20-0 lead and were ahead 20-7 when the Saints scored. The ensuing kickoff went off the face mask of returner Leon Johnson. New Orleans recovered, quickly scored and went on to stun the Bears 29-23 as Jim Miller was intercepted at the goal line with two seconds remaining.
There was no recovering from the loss. The Bears went on to lose their next seven, and six of the eight were by six points or fewer. An asterisk needs to be applied to the season because the team played 16 road games — Soldier Field was being reconstructed, and home games were played at Memorial Stadium in Champaign. Still, the Bears were coming off a fantastic season and had a load of young talent in Brian Urlacher, Mike Brown, Olin Kreutz, Anthony Thomas, Marty Booker and Roosevelt Colvin. Injuries began to pile up, and there was no coming back.
Again, I say this was a worse losing streak because of expectations created by achievement on the field, not “Hard Knocks” and whatever else people used to shape their dreams for 2024.
2. 2024: 10-game losing streak following a 4-2 start.
The schedule turned out to be tougher than anyone could have imagined. Minnesota and Washington turned out to be better predicted, but the Bears could have picked up multiple wins during the agonizing stretch. The loss to the Commanders, the 20-19 loss to Green Bay and the 30-27 overtime loss to Minnesota were gutting. Add in the ending of the Thanksgiving Day loss at Detroit and a lousy effort against a bad New England team, and it’s enough to leave you incensed.
Because the Bears have been playing with a rookie quarterback in Caleb Williams and because an in-season firing of a head coach rarely solves issues on the spot, this does not eclipse the disappointment of the 2002 season. Similarly, neither of these teams was able to win close games — something most bad teams have in common.
3. 2020: Six-game losing streak following a 5-1 start.
Five of the first six wins were one-score games against suspect competition, and the Bears turned out to be paper tigers. When they started playing better teams, they couldn’t respond, and the good vibe in the building quickly disappeared as the losses piled up. The offense was a mess and never got in gear, and the Bears, who finished 8-8, wound up being blown out in New Orleans 21-9 in the wild-card round of the playoffs.
At the end, Chairman George McCaskey praised general manager Ryan Pace and coach Matt Nagy for keeping the team together during the six-game losing streak when he announced they would be retained. Both were fired after the 2021 season.
4. 2022: 10-game losing streak following a 3-4 start.
The Bears pulled off what turned out to be one of the bigger wins of the Matt Eberflus era when they trounced the New England Patriots 33-14 on “Monday Night Football” in Foxborough, Mass., to bring them within a game of .500. They had their doors blown off 49-29 at Dallas six days later and then lost games to the Miami Dolphins, Detroit Lions and Atlanta Falcons by a total of seven points. They suffered mostly lopsided losses down the stretch and lost their last 10 games. Most folks were more focused on draft position in the final four to six weeks of the season, and with a stripped-down roster and more than $85 million in dead cap space, it wasn’t shocking that the team stumbled its way to the finish line.
It’s difficult to win 10 games in a row, and it’s also hard to lose 10 consecutively. That might sound counterintuitive, but the difference in talent from one NFL roster to the next isn’t so vast that these things happen with some regularity. The Bears have had plenty of mediocre to downright bad teams that never lost six games in a row. They found a way — here and there — to get a victory or two in the midst of a string of bad games. This team hasn’t found a way to do so and now has to go to Lambeau Field to close out the season.
10. Pretty wild that Caleb Williams’ streak of 353 pass attempts without an interception is the fourth-longest in a single season in NFL history.
- 2018: Aaron Rodgers, Packers, 402
- 2022: Tom Brady, Buccaneers, 399
- 2024: Justin Herbert, Chargers, 357
- 2024: Williams, Bears, 353
With 122 yards, Williams moved into fifth place on the team’s single-season passing list. He’s at 3,393 yards. I don’t pay a lot of attention to Bears passing records. Most were made to be broken 50 or more years ago. But Williams has proved durable, which should not be overlooked. He has answered the bell and is going to have 17 starts as a rookie.
Tracking Caleb Williams: How the Chicago Bears QB is performing in his rookie season
10a. He’s not going to be a candidate for the Bears, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Matt Nagy gets consideration for a head-coaching position again. Nagy, 46, was 34-31 with the Bears and didn’t have a great quarterback situation, inheriting Mitch Trubisky in 2018. Then the Bears were forced into drafting a quarterback in 2021 and had the fourth choice of passers in Justin Fields. Maybe it won’t happen in this cycle, but it’s wouldn’t be a surprise if some team takes a close look at him for a second shot. Nagy also is considered a strong possibility to one day replace Andy Reid. He and Chiefs GM Brett Veach maintain a close relationship.
10b. The Packers have won 11 consecutive games against the Bears entering next week’s season finale at Lambeau Field. The game will be played on Saturday, Jan. 4 or Sunday, Jan. 5, with the league set to release the Week 18 schedule Sunday.
It’s the longest winning streak in the history of the Bears-Packers rivalry. If Green Bay wins, it will tie for the 14th-longest winning streak against any single team in league history. Don’t worry, there’s a long way to go to top that chart. The Miami Dolphins beat the Buffalo Bills 20 consecutive times from 1970-80. The Bears once defeated the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 12 consecutive times from 1983-89.
10c. Best wishes on a prosperous and healthy New Year.
