In their Week 1 loss to the Los Angeles Rams, Chicago Bears head coach Matt Nagy’s playcalling showed that he lost some confidence in the defense. During his press conference the next day, he didn’t say anything that countered that thinking.
In the Chicago Bears Week 1 loss, we saw something that was a rare thing to happen — the defense thoroughly embarrassed itself to the point that the offense carried it. Despite some hiccups on offense, the Bears were in it for most of the game.
The defense was a mess and it looked like a three-ring circus when the unit was on the field.
Much of what we saw in the preseason continued in Week 1. In fact, we’ve seen more and more of this in the last couple of seasons. These are not just some mediocre players, these are players that just a short time ago were Pro Bowl and All-Pro players. Eddie Jackson and Tashaun Gipson forgot that once a receiver goes down the defense still needs to touch him for him to be down. Also, on too many occasions, Bears defenders missed tackles. That led to some big plays. Furthermore, the defenders missed assignments and looked lost. They didn’t know where they needed to be.
These are all things you’d criticize a Pee Wee football team for doing, let alone a professional football team.
Yes, the offense made its own mistakes, but it went against one of the elite defenses in the NFL and moved the ball pretty well throughout the game. In seven of their eight drives, the Bears ended up on the plus side (the Rams side) of the field. The only one in which they didn’t was the final drive. The offense has to figure out a way to score more than 14 points when that happens, however. Remember, though, this is an incredibly talented Rams defense.
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We saw in head coach Matt Nagy’s playcalling that he didn’t have confidence in the defense. The Bears attempted four fourth-quarter conversions. They failed on each one. The fact that Nagy attempted so many in the game indicates that he didn’t feel the defense could stop the Rams’ offense. It didn’t matter if they punted the ball and put it deep inside the Rams’ territory. We saw on the first drive how fast the Rams could kill the Bears’ defense. They went 80 yards on only three plays for a score. One of them was a bomb for 67 yards in the play where Jackson and Gipson forgot the rules.
The play in which Nagy received the most criticism was on a fourth-and-15 in the middle of the fourth quarter. Instead of opting for a makeable 47-yard field goal, Nagy decided to go for it. Of course, the conversion attempt failed. The Bears were down 27-14 at the time.
Many people wanted the Bears to kick the field goal and be down 10. However, Nagy didn’t feel the defense could make a stop. If they make the field goal and then the defense allows another touchdown, Chicago goes down by 17. If the Bears score a touchdown, they’re back to a 13-point deficit if the defense gives up a touchdown. I don’t know about you, but a two-score deficit is more manageable than a three-score deficit late in the game.
During his press conference the next day, Nagy didn’t say anything that exuded confidence in the defense. When asked about it, this was his response:
That’s one of those situations where you could look at both sides of it. And some of that goes into the game flow and how it’s going. If the game was a different situation and it wasn’t as high-scoring, 10 or 15 points by the opponent, then maybe the field goal, I would have went that route.
If the Rams had only scored 10-15 points to that moment, it meant that the defense made some stops during the game. That didn’t happen, however. The unit gave up big play after big play and when they got to the ball carrier they kept missing tackles. About the only player who tackled well was Roquan Smith. He finished the game with 11 total tackles and 0 missed tackles.
The rest of the defense needs to play like Smith. Even Nagy agrees