Everything that is the 2023 Bears was on display Sunday.
Great defense, much of the time.
Bad coaching.
Terrible decision-making.
Feeble offense.
It’s how a 10-point third-quarter Bears lead turned into a 20-17 Browns victory. It’s how a team barely in the playoff picture now finds itself cropped out. Please don’t tell me that, at 5-9, the Bears still have a chance at the postseason. They’re a playoff team like a turnip is a T-bone.
Head coach Matt Eberflus and offensive coordinator Luke Getsy did their players a disservice Sunday — Eberflus by going for it twice on fourth down rather than having Cairo Santos attempt field goals and Getsy by harnessing the imagination and brain power of plankton to call plays.
Justin Fields is a little farther down on the blame list, thanks to an offensive line that couldn’t handle the Browns’ pass rush. But when are we going to see him do what 38-year-old Browns quarterback Joe Flacco did — win a game that looked hopeless against a good defense?
There were plenty of culprits in another brutal loss. The truth is that, despite all the commotion during the week about the Bears’ three victories in their previous four games, this loss erased most of the good feelings that had been built up. And it brought back to the forefront all the questions that had been tamped down during the two-game winning “streak.”
Should Eberflus be the coach next season?
Should the Bears trade Fields and use their 2024 first-round draft picks to choose a quarterback?
You can keep puffing on whatever makes you happy, but the reality is that Sunday happened and it meant something more than any earlier feel-good games.
Fields’ sad 166 yards on 19-of-40 passing against an excellent defense meant a lot more than his eight touchdown passes combined against the weak defenses of Denver and Washington earlier in the season.
Eberflus’ decision to forgo a 55-yard field-goal attempt right before the half meant a lot more than any of the talk about his keeping the team together when it was losing regularly. He said a kick would have been out of Santos’ range because of the wind. OK, but Fields almost got his head ripped off on the pass play that should have been a kick.
The coach also passed on a field-goal attempt in the fourth quarter. The ensuing fourth-and-one run by Fields fell short.
See the final score to understand what those decisions meant.
Getsy’s fainthearted play-calling meant more than than however much Fields has improved the second half of the season. And feel free to argue Fields’ improvement to your heart’s desire.
He received no help in Cleveland from tight end Robert Tonyan, who dropped a wide-open deep ball in the first quarter.
Packers double agent Robert Tonyan pic.twitter.com/LPVcMFud5u
— Pardon My Take (@PardonMyTake) December 17, 2023
What does Fields do well? What’s the one thing about his game that doesn’t lead to debate? His running. He ran seven times for 30 yards Sunday. Not nearly enough.
When the Browns came back to tie it up at 17 with three minutes, eight seconds left in the game, here’s what the Bears did on the next three plays:
A five-yard loss by Khalil Herbert.
A deep incomplete pass to Darnell Mooney.
A short pass to Roschon Johnson for a three-yard gain on third-and-15.
Getsy could have saved Bears fans a lot of mental anguish by simply handing the ball to the Browns.
Eberflus said he had input into the design of Sunday’s game plan but not in the play-calling itself. After the game, he stated the obvious.
“Looking at it right now, I just think we needed to run the ball to set ourselves up a little bit better in terms of the third downs and manageables,’’ he said.
Don’t be surprised if general manager Ryan Poles takes the easy way out after the season by retaining Eberflus, showing Getsy the door and keeping Fields.
The smart move would be to start over. With the right quarterback and coach, the Bears might turn into a Super Bowl contender. That’s how good this defense is. The Bears intercepted Flacco three times, one a pick-six by linebacker Tremaine Edmunds, and still lost. Hard to believe.
“You can see the guys are improving,’’ Eberflus said.
That’s not the story of the game, coach.
With five seconds left on a gloomy, rainy afternoon, Fields threw a Hail Mary. The deflected pass somehow landed in the hands of a prone Mooney in the end zone. And Mooney somehow bobbled it away. It was a cruel ending. It was also the right one.
