The Chicago Bears’ 6-3 loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Thursday was sealed by a Caleb Williams interception, but there was a sequence early in the series that showed the team was truly lost.
With 5:12 left in the game, the Bears got the ball back and had a chance to tie the game or take the lead. They could also afford a three-pointer, since they had three timeouts left. The worst that could have happened was for the drive to eat up several minutes of the clock without gaining many yards.
As anyone familiar with the Bears this season could predict, that last scenario was the one that came true.
After a run up the middle gave Chicago a first down with 4:17 left, Williams scrambled to second-and-2, and then the wheels came off. A pass to Keenan Allen and another Williams scramble gained just 1 yard, while eating up more than a minute of the clock. With 2:12 left, the Bears faced a fourth-and-inches at their own 38-yard line.
Chicago decided to go for it, but a false start by right guard Jake Curhan made it a fourth-and-five game. Then interim head coach Thomas Brown decided to send out the punt team. And then he called his first timeout of the half. And then send the offense back.
Fortunately, Williams made a big play, perhaps the best of the game, with a running throw to a covered DJ Moore, but the Bears’ final count on the previous two plays was two minutes and three seconds, a vital and negative timeout. 4 yards. The time between the third and fourth attempts alone cost them a full 40 seconds.
The result of that fourth-down play was continued momentum for the Bears, as well as a commitment. They were still in their own territory, with 2:05 left.
Incredibly, that wasn’t even the only wasted timeout in the series, as the Bears lined up for second-and-10 once they were finally in Seattle territory and burned their second half after some confusion at the line of scrimmage.
Williams was visibly frustrated as he walked to the sideline, as the Soldier Field crowd booed the current time management disaster.
The Chicago Bears trailing by 3 under a minute let 20 seconds run off the clock, rushed the play only for the pass to be incomplete THEN let the replay time out and burned a timeout They literally lose 4 plays on the potential winning drive of the game. This organization is so fucking bad. pic.twitter.com/UrFwCvZx6m
– Full access to Packerfan: Clayton (@packers_access) December 27, 2024
In particular, the Bears could have attempted a field goal about 58 yards from the 40, which would have been a long run for kicker Cairo Santos. Brown opted to go for the first down.
The Bears didn’t get another first down, as Williams threw an incomplete pass on third down and then the interception on fourth-and-10 to end the lowest-scoring game of the 2024 NFL season. It was the Bears’ 10th consecutive loss and their final home game of the season.
When asked about burning his first timeout to push back the punt team, Brown denied there was any confusion. He then explained his thought process in a rather confusing manner.:
“There wasn’t any confusion, I just changed my mind. I think being able to use (punter) Tory (Taylor) as a weapon, and we still had, I think, 2:16 on the clock, we still had the three timeouts . plus the two-minute warning. So, the way our defense had been playing all day, possibly having the opportunity to change the field and force a three, get a shorter field, they had to go to one last end. of the game. drive, That was my thought process.
“And then in the course of that, I changed my mind and said, ‘Let’s do it now.'”
Brown responded to a follow-up question about why he changed his mind by saying, “I just wanted to be more aggressive.”
That’s not exactly going to absolve Brown in the eyes of Bears fans. Although, to be fair, most of them are probably just looking away right now. There is one game left on Chicago’s schedule: a road game against the Green Bay Packers next Sunday.