Losing to the Green Bay Packers in itself was bad enough for the Chicago Bears. It’s become a trend they can’t seem to break. They always seem to play their worst football against that team. Yet something was different about Sunday night at Lambeau Field. Something the Bears haven’t had a taste of in a long time. Something that could shake the franchise right to the top.
They quit. To anybody who watched it was painfully obvious, especially on the defensive side of the ball. For a brief instant after an ugly first half, the Bears had a chance to cut into the Packers 27-10 deficit early in the 3rd quarter. They managed to force their first punt of the game. Unfortunately three plays later Mitch Trubisky airmailed a ball that was intercepted.
That seemed to be the final straw for the defense.
Four plays after that, Aaron Rodgers found Robert Tonyan for a 39-yard touchdown to make it 34-10. Then on the next Packers drive, Rodgers only threw the ball twice. The seven other plays were Jamaal Williams runs. The last one being a 13-yard score where multiple Bears defenders bounced off him on the way to the end zone. It was a laughable effort from a group that is supposed to be one of the best in the NFL. The first real sign they’d officially checked out.
Things like that don’t happen and can’t happen on good teams. Ryan Pace was hired to find players who don’t do that. Matt Nagy was hired to coach players well enough to avoid that. Seeing it happen on primetime television was a damning condemnation of both. This is why buzz has picked up that a house cleaning could be on the way. Something Jeff Hughes of Da Bears Blog, who’s proven to have credible sources in the past, confirms.
Subscribe to the BFR podcast and ride shotgun with Dave and Ficky as they break down Bears football like nobody else.
“Where do we go from here? Where we have gone many times previously. A friend of mine, someone who knows what is happening at Halas Hall, texted me in the fourth quarter. “The team quit…it’s over…no chance this isn’t blown up.” There will soon be new leadership for the Chicago Bears.”
Chicago Bears changes are a matter of when not if
This falls right in line with the same things I’ve heard. George McCaskey was already frustrated. That loss seems to have been his breaking point. Understandably so. The way it was described after the game was “heads will roll.” Nothing short of a miracle will save Nagy and Pace now. They’d need to go 4-1 just to avoid finishing 8-8 for the second year in a row.
The lingering question moving forward is how high the house cleaning will go. One name that continues to be on the lips of several Bears fans is Ted Phillips. He’s been the Bears team president since 1999. The team has made the playoffs just five teams in that span. Many blame him and his lack of football background as a major reason for this. How can they expect anything to truly change when a glorified accountant holds the top spot in the organization?
Only McCaskey can answer that question and he’s not talking.
For the time being it looks like Nagy and Pace will finish out the season. After that, the Chicago Bears will be expected to hand them their walking papers. From there it’s anybody’s guess on how they go about rebuilding the entire power structure. Their last two such attempts went poorly. Maybe the third time will be the charm.