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I like this way of thinking. As an official, I understand impact to the game. The NFL guys do as well. I actually officiated an arena game several years ago with the white hat from last night. He’s a great official and person from my limited interaction. But he missed on the holding call because he didn’t see the entire play. He turned his head too slowly to his key and stayed on the middle too long. And the DPI was a matter of a bad angle. That official guessed because he didn’t see the contact fully. He shouldn’t have thrown the flag and defeated it to a colleague. What’s more, one of the others should have come to him after and talked him into picking it up. Those two plays directly impacted the game.

Yeah, no one is catching his balls.🫣 He has a lot of pressure playing for a team with fans that haven't eaten in decades. The Bears bring all these food trucks in and get mouths watering and the doors open and nothing.

The Bears should take a page out of Sean McVay's book from the first couple years he had with Jared Goff. He ran a mostly no-huddle offense that wasn't necessarily up-tempo, but it allowed Goff to look to the sidelines for the playcall, like in college, and gave them plenty of time to get all their motions in. Part of the problem last night is that they weren't getting to the line quick enough to do all the motions, and I think it affected the thought process of the QB. It's been clear to me that Caleb Williams has been at his best in the no-huddle offense. I'm not going to skewer Johnson after one game, but he's got to use this to his advantage at some point and not be so rigid about his preferred methods. I really think it could make a huge difference for this offense if they integrated the no-huddle more often moving forward.

I'm reading that it's automatically placed on the 40.

One other thing to note. Williams took a hit to his right shoulder on his rushing TD. It seemed like every throw after that was a chore. Might be unrelated, but if he had any kind of tightness that could affect his throwing motion, that might account for him overcompensating.

Williams now has 597 passing attempts in his career with only 6 INTs. With 4 more attempts without one, his INT% will be under 1.0. The only QB under 1.4 is Jacoby Brissett at 1.36. Aaron Rodgers is at 1.4. Justin Herbert is the only other QB under 1.7%. To put that into perspective, Williams could throw 2 INTs in his next 3 passing attempts and still have the lowest INT% in NFL history.

I know people love PFF grades. Top 3 and Bottom 3 players from both sides: 1. Wright - 77.9 2. Williams - 77.1 <insert eyeball emoji here> 3. Zaccheaus - 72.1 14. Loveland - 52.1 15. Monangai - 51.4 16. Jackson - 31.0 > very concerning. It felt like he either had a false start or missed a block. 1. Owens - 74.9 2. Wright - 74.4 3. Stevenson - 69.1 > played surprisingly well 15. McCloud - 44.1 16. Williams - 42.2 17. Billings - 34.3 > concerning considering his RDEF grade was 37.7.

From what I have seen online, since it would be a penalty, MIN could just decline and make him rekick. So the only other option was to go for an onside kick and try to tackle them within 3 seconds, which is not a guarantee.

Carmen and Jurko were blowing major crap to Johnson for not having Santos kick the ball the ball out of bounds due to him not being able to kick it out the back.

Here is the fake holding call on Wright, it is one of the worst calls I have seen in a long time, with the ref looking right at it:

Yeah, absolutely, luckily Owens made a great tackle on the next play so it didn't cost the Bears points. It just sucks because now this hangs over everyone's heads. The game is over if the Bears score a TD with first and 10 at the 12 if Wright is not called for touching a defender as he falls to the ground. To me it just felt like the league didn't want a blowout on MNF and all of a sudden, in the 4th quarter, they start making all of these phantom calls, but only on the Bears. Mason had 2 long runs (both in 4Q, both on TD drives) where there was clearly holding right at the point of attack, which is an easy call because in order for the hole to be that big it's either a missed gap assignment or a hold. The Bears were held both times, no call.

So I think we can safely say that some of the preseason can be correlated to the regular season. Special Teams was an issue in the preseason, and it was also in Week 1. On punts, MIN's PR Price averaged 17.0 on his returns (which is crazy). Duvernay averaged 9.3. The Bears lost 31 net yards in punt coverage. Wright was 7-333 on punts averaging 47.6. Taylor was 6-266 for only 44.3 per punt. So the Bears lost another 20 net yards in just punts. That is 51 lost yards without the offense or defense on the field, which basically equates to at least 3 pts. I don't know how a punter loses 10 yards off his punts from college to the pros. Then our glorious Captain Kicker got to watch Reichard go 2/2 on FGs and hit a 59-yarder while Santos missed a 50-yarder going the same way and couldn't kick the ball out of the end zone to save his life. He also barely made his lone FG. All in all, not good. At some point will Hightower ever be held accountable?

There was also the phantom hands to the face/facemask on the Bears which clearly wasn’t.

Time of Possession: Bears 32:53 Vikings 27:07

Penalties: Bears 12-127 Vikings 8-50

People forget how bad last year's Week 1 was because the Bears won, but I doubt people remember that the offense didn't score a TD (Stevenson had a Pick-6 and Owens had a Blocked Punt Return). The offense had 11 first downs, 5 passing, and had 148 total yards. This year they had 20 first downs, 10 passing, and had 317 total yards against a better defense. Williams' performance has also improved: 2024: 14-29, 93 yards, 48.3%, 0 TD, 0 INT, 3.2 Y/A, 2 sacks, 55.7 QB Rating, 22.5 QBR, 5-15 rushing. 2025: 21-35, 210 yards, 60.0%, 1 TD, 0 INT, 6.0 Y/A, 2 sacks, 86.6 QB Rating, 63.8 QBR, 6-58 rushing, 1 TD.

Week 1 - Penix - 83.7 QBR - 298 yds, 1 TD, 1 sack, and 21 rushing yards. 319 Total Yards. Lost. Williams - 63.8 QBR - 210 yds, 1 TD, 2 sacks, and 58 rushing yards and 1 TD. 268 Total Yards. Lost. Daniels - 55.1 QBR - 233 yds, 1 TD, 3 sacks, and 68 rushing yards. 301 Total Yards. Won. McCarthy - 52.6 QBR - 143 yds, 2 TD, 1 INT, 3 sacks, and 25 rushing yards and 1 TD. 168 Total Yards. Won. Maye - 39.3 QBR - 287 yds, 1 TD, 1 INT, 4 sacks, and 11 rushing yards. 298 Total Yards. Lost. Nix - 19.2 QBR - 176 yds, 1 TD, 2 INT, 1 sack, and 18 rushing yards + 1 fumble lost. 194 Total Yards. Won. Crazy to think both McCarthy and Nix accounted for under 200 total yards and both won is crazy. Nix had 3 Turnovers and won.

The Pick-6 is just an INT, they don't get docked for the outcome of the play. McCarthy's Raw QBR was 47.9 and Caleb's was 64.8. The 63.8 is Caleb's 5th highest game of his career, and he is ranked 13th after Week 1. Williams 77.1 PFF Grade was also 13th this week for QBs.

Almost every game comes down to 2-3 plays. Regardless how the rest of the game played out, there was no less than 7 pts lost to terrible officiating. It is one thing to miss a call, it is another to actually impact the outcome of the game with a phantom call, and the Bears had two back-breaking ones in a 5-minute span to start the 4th Quarter. Phantom Holding Call on Wright = -3 or -7 pts (Bears would've had the ball at the 12, led to a missed FG) Phantom DPI on Stevenson = -4 pts (next play was a TD)

When you leave points on the field it will catch up. The Bears going for it on 4th when they could have got an easy 3 sent us to bed early disappointed. It could have put them in OT. The Bears need their payroll to show...Jaylon, Gordon, and Edmunds were missed. And wth happened to Wright, he needs to get mean and focused?

That sums it up perfectly. It's a start and we should have won this game. BJ has to get them to clean up the dumb mistakes and he has to call a more aggressive game. So I'm looking at improvement in the coming weeks before I go off the cliff. But, still, we come out of this as "the same old Bears" in most folks view.

Many things to dislike but trying to be rational in my evaluation. Penalties killed drives. Will say a couple of bogus calls by the umps didnt help. Defense looked very good and then seem to run out of gas in the last quarter. Caleb didnt have a good game (IMO). Missed reads and erratic throws. Did well in the beginning and run well but it disappeared at the most important part of the game. (4th quarter) BJ had some mistakes. Santos missed FG was huge. I think everyone said this will take a little time to get going and after this game that is obvious. Very disappointing to give away a victory and losing made it seem like the old Bears but I think BJ will clean it up.

This - I still think Poles has been very weak as a talent evaluator. Drafts are still pretty meh and his real hits are Ben Johnson (hopefully this ages well) and the Panthers trade. They look like they drafted a potential starting RT in Trapillo (but they invested a top 10 pick in Wright (who doesn’t look like a top 10 pick - and they opted for him over Jalen Carter). Turner was hurt in camp so I’m hoping this is more they think he needs a bit more time - I sure hope he is flashing though cause they need to hit on a few. Burden looked explosive in preseason so at least for now I’m going to say that pick, while not the position I wanted, at first glance looks like a potential starter.

Want to give Moore credit - for all the talk last year, dude got annihilated and was back out two plays later.

Honestly - If not for the Bears blowing it we probably would be more glass half full than empty on Caleb in his first game. We saw some of his struggles but he also had some nice plays - reality is he is far more raw then we all expected and was poorly coached and also fairly well prepped and open to coaching in his first year (blame is just as much on him as previous regime). With that said - he has to accept responsibility for what he did and really bring in the work and accept being coached hard and work even harder. He has the physical gifts - but does he really want it. Let’s see how he and the team respond - but man - they likely are looking at Raider game as the next winnable game…they needed this one.