The Chicago Bears’ 6-3 loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Thursday was sealed with a Caleb Williams interception, but there was one sequence earlier in the drive 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-and-out, as they still had all three of their timeouts left. The worst that could have happened was that the stage took several minutes off the clock without gaining many meters.
As anyone familiar with the Bears this season could predict, the latter scenario came true.
After a run up the middle gave Chicago its first deficit with 4:17 to go, Williams scrambled to get second and second, and then the wheels fell off. A pass to Keenan Allen and another Williams gained just 1 yard while eating more than a minute off the clock. With 2:12 remaining, the Bears were faced with a fourth-and-inch on their own 38-yard line.
Chicago opted to go for it, but a false start by right guard Jake Curhan made it a fourth-and-five. So interim head coach Thomas Brown opted to send the punting team out. And then he calls his first timeout of the half. And then return the violation.
Fortunately, Williams made a great play, perhaps his best of the game, with a running throw to a covered DJ Moore, but the final score for the Bears over the previous two plays was two minutes and three seconds, a crucial timeout and negative. 4 meters. The time alone between third and fourth place cost them no less than 40 seconds.
The result of that fourth-down play was a continued drive for the Bears, as well as a commitment. They were still in their own territory, with 2:05 remaining.
Incredibly, that wasn’t even the only wasted timeout of the drive, as the Bears lined up for second-and-10 when they were finally in Seattle territory and burned their second of the half after some confusion on the line of scrimmage.
Williams was visibly frustrated as he walked to the sideline as the Soldier Field crowd booed at the ongoing time management disaster.
The Chicago Bears are down 3 less than a minute, let 20 seconds run off the clock, rush the play only for the pass to fall incomplete THEN let the play expire and fire a timeout 😂 Literally lose 4 plays on the potential winning drive . This organization is so damn 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 from the 40, which would have been a long career for kicker Cairo Santos. Brown opted to go for the first down.
The Bears did not get another first down as Williams threw an incomplete pass on third down and then the interception on fourth and 10, ending the lowest scoring game of the 2024 NFL season. It was the tenth loss in a row for the Bears and their last home game of the season.
When asked about burning his first timeout to withdraw the punt team, Brown denied there was any confusion and then explained his thought process in a rather confusing way:
“There was no confusion at all, I just changed my mind. I think I can use it [punter] Tory [Taylor] as a weapon, and we still had, I think, 2:16 on the clock, still had all three timeouts plus the two-minute warning. So the way our defense played all day, possibly with the opportunity to turn the field and force a three-and-out, get a shorter field, they have to make a final game ending, that was my thought process .
“And then, in the course of that, I changed my mind and said, ‘Let’s go for it now.’”
Brown responded to a follow-up question about why he changed his mind by saying, “I just wanted to be more aggressive.”
Brown won’t exactly forgive that in the eyes of Bears fans. But to be honest, most of them are probably just looking away at this point. There is one more game on Chicago’s schedule: a road game against the Green Bay Packers next Sunday
