The Chicago Bears’ 6-3 loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Thursday was sealed by a Caleb Williams interception, but there was a sequence earlier in the campaign that showed the team was well and truly lost.
With 5:12 left, the Bears got the ball back and had a chance to either tie the game or take the lead. They could also afford a three-and-out, as they had three timeouts remaining. The worst thing that could have happened was for the journey to be several minutes late without gaining many meters.
As anyone familiar with the Bears this season could predict, the latter scenario is the one that came true.
After a run up the middle, Chicago got a first down with 4:17 left. Williams struggled for 2nd and 2nd, then the wheels fell off. A pass to Keenan Allen and another scrambled Williams gained only a yard, while eating up more than a minute of delay. With just 2:12 left, the Bears were faced with a 4th and inch at their own 38 yard line.
Chicago elected to go for it, but a false start by right guard Jake Curhan made it a 4th and 5. So interim head coach Thomas Brown opted to send in the punt team. And then call his first timeout of the half. And then return the offense.
Fortunately, Williams made a great play, perhaps his best of the game, with a running throw to a covered DJ Moore, but the Bears’ final tally on the previous two plays was two minutes and three seconds , a vital and negative dead time. four meters. The time between the third and fourth downs alone cost them 40 seconds.
The result of that fourth down was continued motivation for the Bears, as well as commitment. They were still on their own territory, with 2:05 remaining.
Incredibly, that wasn’t even the only timeout lost, as the Bears lined up for 2nd and 10 once they were finally in Seattle territory and burned their second of the half after some confusion at the line of scrimmage.
Williams was visibly frustrated as he headed to the sideline, while the Soldier Field crowd rained boos over the current time management disaster.
The Chicago Bears were down 3 points in less than a minute, let 20 seconds run out of the clock, rushed the play only for the pass to fall incomplete THEN let the play run out and burned a time dead 😂 Literally lose 4 games on the potentially winning game. This organization is really bad. pic.twitter.com/UrFwCvZx6m
– Packerfan Total Access – Clayton (@packers_access) December 27, 2024
Notably, the Bears could have attempted a field goal from about 58 yards out of 40, which would have been a career long for kicker Cairo Santos. Brown elected 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 4th-and-10 to end the lowest-scoring game of the 2024 NFL season. It was the Bears’ 10th straight loss and their final home game of the season.
When asked if he burned his first timeout to remove the punt team, Brown denied there was any confusion, then explained his thought process in a rather confusing way:
“There was no confusion, I just changed my mind. I think I could use Tory as a weapon, and we still had, I think, 2:16 on the clock, there were still the three timeouts plus the two-minute warning “So the way our defense played all day, maybe having the chance to turn the field over and force a three-and-out, get a shorter field, they have to make one last drive at the end of the match, it was my thought. process.
“And then, during that, I changed my mind and said, ‘Let’s go now.'”
Brown responded to a follow-up question about why he changed his mind by saying, “I just wanted to be more aggressive.”
This isn’t exactly going to absolve Brown in the eyes of Bears fans. But to be honest, most of them probably look away at this point. There is one game left on Chicago’s schedule: an away game against the Green Bay Packers next Sunday.
