Bears4Ever_34

Lol, freakin Santos. Get the freak off this team.

Lol, Bears are totally losing this game now. Offense shits the bed and now the special teams gift wraps them a touchdown opportunity.

Brisker injures himself and Stevenson on what should have been another interception. Didn't look good for Stevenson either. freak! Just when they were about to get healthy in the secondary.

And, of course, the Bears can't finish the knockout punch with a touchdown. Settling for another FG. Ben Johnson goes to Swift way too much. If he had Monangai in instead, they more than likely pick up that first down on the play before the 3rd down mess.

Redemption for the rookie.

Burden drops a critical pass to move the chains. Bears doing their best to keep Minnesota in the game.

Potential knockout drive here if the Bears are able to come away with 7.

Referees miss a blatant facemask on 3rd down that would have continued the drive. Yet another game where the Bears get screwed by the officiating.

Ben Johnson with one of the worst end of half decisions I've ever seen. What in the literal hell was he trying to do there?? Just run the ball 3 times and force MIN to burn all their timeouts! Instead, he throws the ball, calls a timeout on 3rd and 1 on their own side of the field, and then Caleb overthrows another open receiver deep down field on the next play, giving MIN a shot to get the ball again with all their timeouts. He almost got burned again like in the first game. 7/16 for the QB that half. Totally inexcusable performance by Caleb. Luckily, McCarthy has been even worse, but the offense is not taking advantage of opportunities. Another big opportunity to start the 2nd half with the ball. They have to push this to two scores to force KOC to abandon the run.

Ugh.. Missed a huge opportunity to go up two scores with a touchdown after that pick. Bears get the ball back to start the half. Cannot allow Minnesota to put up points before then.

Finally a great drive! Keep Monangai in the game. He's a beast!

Caleb throws with no touch, whatsoever. These overthrows are college backup quality.

Offense didn't come ready to play. Horrible playcalling and execution. Caleb missing open deep throws. Not good.

This team has to find a way to do no worse than 2-2 during this 4 game stretch if they want to keep their playoff hopes realistically alive. Today's the most important day of the 4. Knock off Minnesota as a wildcard competitor and start racking up wins in the division, which could be important for tiebreakers later.

Damn, nice find! Though a loss wouldn't be the end of the world, it'll be hard for me to take the Bears seriously if they let JJ McCarthy sweep them.

He's listed as questionable against the Vikings, which is crazy. I was thinking he'd be back for that first Packers game, but in light of this news, it might be even sooner than that. Ben said he's healthy. Now it's just a matter of conditioning. What a huge boost that would be to get him back during this difficult stretch.

Drake Maye has a lot of similarities to Jordan Love, in my opinion. He's very talented, and if he hits, I think he'll always be a fringe top 10 guy, but there's something about him that I don't trust. Great deep ball thrower who has a good feel for hitting his checkdowns, but his decision making leaves a little to be desired at times, too. He's a little clumsy. Takes too many bad sacks, loses control of the football a lot, and has had a few Jordan Love-like gaffes in the redzone in his career. Caleb is the more dynamic player. I'd still take his arm talent over Maye's, but he's just not as polished yet as a pocket passer. He's also less prone to mistakes and probably one of one in the NFL in terms of avoiding pressure. We're starting to see a little more college Caleb in that regard this year the way he's been toying with pass rushers. Maye deserves his flowers for how good he's been this year, but people are crazy if they think he's a real MVP candidate over guys like Stafford, Darnold, or even Jonathon Taylor. Unless Caleb falls off a cliff by the end of the year, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see him take back the #1 QB of his class next year once Maye gets a 1st place schedule and faces stiffer competition. Last year it was all about Daniels and Bo Nix with Maye and Caleb a distant 3rd and 4th. This year it's become mostly Drake Maye with Caleb a distant 2nd. Next year could be Caleb's year.

Burkhardt and Brady are calling this matchup. Brady's called two of Caleb's best games of his career (Packers last year, Cowboys this year). Let's hope that continues

That's fine if you feel that way, but is there really no room to be wrong here? You speak with such certainty about a team that's quite literally 1 win away from potentially being in sole possession of 1st place and being able to control their own destiny the rest of the way. The Bears haven't lost to a bad team yet, but the Packers have, twice. I'm not entirely sold on them being a playoff team yet until I see how these next couple weeks look like, but you already seemed to have shut down any possibility that they could be, which seems weird given the circumstances of the division right now. The Lions just soft fired their OC, the Packers offense is in shambles, and the Vikings quarterback sucks. Everyone in this division has flaws.

It's a fair criticism, but I also kind of hate it. It's not just about who you play, but when you play them, and that context is always left out whenever that stat is thrown out there. For example, the Bears played the Commanders after they were just coming off a blowout win against the Chargers on the road. Nobody who wasn't a Bears fan was picking the Bears in that game, but now that they've fallen apart everyone acts like they were always a bad team that the Bears shouldn't get credit for beating. You could say the same thing about the Cowboys in week 3.

There's a strong possibility everything will come down to the last two weeks of the regular season. The primary competitor the Bears have for that final wildcard spot is SF, who has one of the easier schedules in the league, but MIN and CAR could also be in the mix. If the Bears really want to get in, a win against MIN this week and a win against SF later in the season would be the best way to go about securing that playoff spot. It would really suck if the Bears finish with the same record as either MIN or SF and lose a tiebreaker that keeps them out. They have an opportunity to potentially deliver a knockout blow to the Vikings with a win on Sunday to push them to 4-6. They could only afford to lose maybe 1 more game the rest of the way to realistically have a shot, which seems dubious.

I don't believe Gardner has ever been a CB. He's played Safety and NB, but not corner. Gordon played outside corner in college, but never in the pro's. I didn't notice it in real-time, but I did here on the Hoge and Jahns podcast they mentioned how Allen was using Gardner some as a safety, along with Byard, and having Brisker in the box as an extra DB. It's another unique wrinkle that I think we'll see more of when Gordon comes back. You might see more Dime coverage, too, although that would really hurt the Bears already porous run defense. Whatever the case, you can't keep him off the field as long as he continues to play this way. I would really love to see them sign Asante Samuel Jr this week to give us even more reinforcements.

For clarity, I meant in regards to Caleb as QB1. Yesterday was the first time the Bears unquestionably won because of the quarterback, in my opinion. You could argue last week too, although I thought that game was just as much about the run game as the QB play. I do agree that his decision making still leaves some to be desired. I don't have as much of a problem with him choosing to use his legs vs throwing the ball, because throwing it introduces more variables into the equation in ways that just running for the first down (if you know you can get it) don't. Particularly in a game where his receivers were dropping everything, I was fine with those decisions. I didn't care for the deep TD attempt to DJ Moore on a 3rd (or was it a 4th down play?) when he had Burden wide open for the easy first down underneath. Those are the ones where he needs to be smarter and not be as aggressive when you are in those critical do or die downs, and the priority has to be ensuring you move the chains.

Yeah, I wish I felt better about this game than I do. McCarthy isn't an NFL starter, but I don't have confidence in this defense to make him look terrible. As long as Ben Johnson continues to use Swift more than Monangai, I'm not as confident in this run game against the Vikings. Swift just doesn't have the physical presence that Monangai does running down hill. He gives them some extra juice, and picks up those hidden yards that Swift generally does not do. If Johnson continues with the same script next week, I think that's going to be a big mistake, along with keeping Burden off the field. I hope he's smart enough to recognize this.

It could be short lived, but I believe this is the first time the Bears would be in the playoffs if the season ended today. They're the 7th seed currently. If the Packers lose tomorrow, I think they fall to the 7th spot and the Bears move up to 6h. Big losses for the 49'ers, Vikings, and Panthers today gives the Bears a slight cushion. The next two weeks become another inflection point for this team. Win both and your chances of making the playoffs grow considerably. Lose both and your season is probably over. Split, and you're still alive, but the road gets infinitely more daunting with PHI and GB coming up right after.