Final Word: The Chicago Bears' biggest issue is becoming its biggest threat to its future
This entire week, the Chicago Bears gave us reasons to believe it wasn't time to panic about the offensive line.
It's just a fundamentals thing, the guys just need to clean up some things. Do the "little things," like the cliche says.
It's a communications issue. NRG Stadium was a hostile environment.
This week was going to be better.
It wasn't. Now, it's time to start recognizing the biggest issue is the Bears' biggest threat to its future.
That's right, it's the Bears' blissful ignorance.
"This is our third game, and there was some positivity to take," Bears Head Coach Matt Eberflus said. "We're going to get better this week, and there was better production on the offensive side."
The Bears need to do something about their offensive line. This has become painfully and evidently clear through three weeks.
Choose any measure you'd like, and you have to wonder if it's fixable: 13 total sacks through three games (tied for third worst in the league), 3.0 yards per rush (second worst in the league) or just 63 rushing yards against arguably the worst rushing defense in the NFL.
Where would you even begin to fix it? The Bears have only offered the idea that they need to fix the things they need to fix, but that just skirts around the answer.
This offseason was spent re-imagining what an offense could look like in Chicago. Good offense was never really this franchise's thing, especially when considering how it was supposed to be under Marc Trestman and Matt Nagy. Trestman was gone after two years and Nagy's best teams were centered around stellar defenses.
The Bears tried to convince us this team had both but left out the part about their offensive line.
I wrote about this one week ago, saying the Bears' offensive line could get better. Opportunities were coming for the unit to play with confidence, improve and be better. This unit did neither on Sunday against a Colts team they should have played better against.
Coleman Shelton has started games in the league before. Nate Davis was a starter in Tennessee before earning a nice contract with the Bears. I'm willing to give Darnell Wright and Braxton Jones a bit of a break, as they're still younger than Davis and Shelton. The most difficult part about it is this team can't change it if it wants to.
Bears General Manager Ryan Poles told us this team's offensive line was as deep as it's been since he's been in Chicago. His previous two teams won 10 total games, so the bar wasn't that high to clear.
The Bears are down Ryan Bates and Kiran Amegadije is just getting healthy. This is the same team that let James Daniel and Lucas Patrick walk. Both are two of the three highest-graded interior linemen by Pro Football Focus. It's not like the Bears can just trade for a top guard or sign one off the street in Week 3, either.
Indianapolis Colts defensive tackle Taven Bryan sacks Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams during the first quarter Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Ima
This all led to Sunday, where the lowest point was the fourth and one play from the one-yard line. The speed option play the players said they practiced went for minus 12 yards.
The Bears would have been better off trying the tush push off the cuff.
This leads me to the coaching staff, which was blissfully ignorant in two ways on Sunday.
The first was the speed option play on fourth and one. It, without hyperbole, may have been the worst play I've ever seen the Bears run in my 25 years of watching the team. It's worse than the tight end screens Nagy used to run, or some of the offensive schemes Terry Shea used to try and implement.
It was a play that relied on the defense biting on the quarterback and the offensive line being up to the task.
The Colts defense, on their own one-yard line, didn't have much room to worry about being backed up that far. The Bears' offensive line, which would give up four sacks Sunday, had four of the team's five offensive linemen on the ground shortly after the snap.
"At the end of the day it was a rough performance rather than bad talent," Poles said of the line's Week 2 performance in a pre-game interview with ESPN 1000; the Week 3 performance only furthered the notion that it's talent.
The second was taking a timeout on a two-point conversion after not properly communicating to the team the plan was to go for two.
Eberflus, with the play clock running down, opted for a timeout instead of a delay of game. In this case, the timeout is more important than any five yards. That timeout would've been useful in the waning minutes when a gassed defense needed all the help they needed in trying to stop Johnathan Taylor.
That defense also gave the Bears everything it needed with a two-turnover game, intercepting Anthony Richardson twice.
"To have two interceptions on their side is all we need on offense," Bears quarterback Caleb Williams said. "Those guys deserve to win."
They do. So does Williams, who set a Bears' rookie passing record with 363 yards passing on 52 passing attempts.
But the front office and coaching staff have had their blissfully ignorant moments throughout the first three weeks. Williams has had his struggles, but that's expected out of a rookie quarterback.
"I think the offensive identity is brewing," Williams said. "I think it's a lot closer than it was the week before or weeks before, I think it's right there. I think we were one small detail away on a lot of these plays and that includes me."
It's not all on the rookie, though.
Much of it lies on the shoulders of the decision-makers at Halas Hall, both on and off the field.
If these issues with the offensive line and play calling aren't fixed, or if a plan doesn't exist to fix them soon, it's the biggest threat to the Bears future: Caleb Williams' development.