Only nine seconds remained Monday night, admittedly a difficult needle for the Chicago Bears to thread as they tried to recapture a promising evening that had slipped away.
Somehow, an 11-point third-quarter lead became a 10-point deficit late in the fourth. And by the time the Bears took the field for their final possession — trailing 27-24 and 80 yards away from Soldier Field’s south end zone — their win probability had plummeted, according to ESPN Analytics, from a peak of 94.2 percent down to 3.8.
Still, nine seconds is nine seconds. And if any team should understand how wacky the final sequence of an NFL game can become, it would be the Bears, whose 2024 season was filled with jaw-dropping, mind-bending finishes.
At the very least, the Bears hoped to maximize what little time they had left to either set up a long game-tying field goal attempt, a game-deciding “Hail Mary” throw or a desperate lateral bonanza for when time expired.
With 16 seconds remaining, the Minnesota Vikings called a timeout, presumably providing the Bears with an opportunity to solidify their offensive plans before receiving a punt. In real time, a minute and 11 seconds passed between the moment the timeout began and when the Bears offense took the field.
So what was all this? This delay inside the huddle? This rush to the line of scrimmage with only 11 seconds on the play clock? This pre-snap disorder that ultimately resulted in the final penalty of a flag-filled night?
The infraction: an illegal shift by receiver DJ Moore, who was sprinting across the field to get aligned on the proper side of the formation when he was hit in the gut by an ill-timed snap.
Huh?
“Those were some of our last plays of the game,” Bears coach Ben Johnson said Wednesday. “And we weren’t fully on the same page.”
“Solely on me,” added Moore, who gathered the fumble on that play and raced out of bounds. “I was misaligned. I just heard (the play) wrong.”
In short, the Bears’ night on offense was characterized by sloppiness, confusion and, yes, a wave of pre-snap penalties that confirmed for a national audience that this offense has a long, long way to go to be contention-ready.
Moore’s illegal shift was the Bears’ 12th enforced penalty and the seventh against the offense Monday, not including a second-quarter holding violation by running back Kyle Monangai that the Vikings declined. In the first half alone, the Bears committed four false starts, out of sync with quarterback Caleb Williams’ snap count.
“We can’t go to the next level until we’ve taken care of those basics,” offensive coordinator Declan Doyle said. “Ben has talked from the very beginning here that their secret sauce in Detroit was not the trick plays and all that fun stuff; it was the mastery of the fundamentals. That’s where the foundation of this offense exists. So we have to continue detailing the things we believe in.”
After Monday’s false-start barrage, Johnson struggled to wrap his brain around that element of disarray. He was asked specifically how the Bears can fix that quickly.
“Yeah. I guess silent cadence, right?” he responded with an obviously aggravated smirk. “Maybe that’ll help here this week.”
The sarcasm felt thick.
Still, Johnson gracefully worked to turn the focus toward this weekend’s game — Sunday afternoon on the road against the Detroit Lions. Silent cadence will indeed be needed.
“And we’re going to need to be really good at that,” Johnson said. “Because this is going to be a loud environment we’re going into. It’s going to be a playoff-like atmosphere. Ford Field has been something else over the last couple years. So we’re going to have to be at our best.”
Penalties and other process issues in Ben Johnson’s debut as head coach showed the Bears offense has a long way to go. (David Banks / Imagn Images)
The Bears were far from their best in Week 1, particularly before the snap. Moore was responsible for one false start in the second quarter when his motion wasn’t correctly timed with the snap. Right tackle Darnell Wright had a first-half hiccup of his own. And right guard Jonah Jackson drew two false-start flags — though in his defense, both times at least one fellow Bears lineman jumped along with him, indicating confusion with the snap count and/or cadence.
Not that Jackson took any consolation in that.
“I take it personally,” he said Thursday afternoon. “This is something we all need to be focused in on. This is something we all need to fix.”
Added Doyle: “The very first thing is that this applies to everybody. Coaches, players. Everybody.”
While many Bears players and coaches have been successful in pointing the thumb this week, the accountability for such repetitive blunders traces upward and almost always involves the player taking the snaps — in this case, Williams.
“Whenever you’re the quarterback and certainly as the play caller myself, you take a lot of responsibility for that,” Johnson said. “So if we’re not all getting off at the same time or if we’re having procedure issues, then, yeah, you look at the play caller and the quarterback first and foremost.
“It’s really the responsibility of everybody else from there to make sure we’re getting it right. Once again, that’s a huge point of emphasis here this week.”
Asked to describe his accountability in the false-start issues, Williams expressed his intent to communicate more loudly and clearly inside the huddle.
“Or maybe not be as aggressive on punching the gas on the cadence,” he said. “Whatever the case may be, we’ll fix it. … Small things like that go a long way.”
That’s why Monday night’s loss was so disconcerting, a death-by-a-thousand-cuts demise, especially for an offense that followed a promising opening touchdown drive with a tsunami of sloppiness. Over the next nine possessions, the Bears totaled 192 yards, 10 first downs and three points. There were ill-timed penalties, badly missed and a lack of cohesiveness.
That kind of ugliness can’t continue on Sunday in Detroit against the reigning NFC North champions. The pre-snap process must be much more polished.
“This is a work in progress,” Jackson said. “And these things happen every week. I feel like our issues were amplified a little bit because it was ‘Monday Night Football.’ But when the stage gets bigger, the details get smaller. And this is something we definitely have to focus on.”
Now, while cleaning up the myriad mistakes from Week 1, the Bears have also spent a chunk of this week diving into their silent cadence process.
“It’s not like we’re refining just one thing. Now we’re adding an element, too,” Doyle said. “That’s something we’ve emphasized. And really, it’s right back to the basics of getting under center and talking through our process to determine, from every bad result, where our process was flawed. We’re all responsible. But who do we need to be coaching to get this corrected?”
For Williams specifically?
“Any time there are cadence issues, you have to go back to the very beginning,” Doyle said. “It’s the communication in the huddle and then going to the line of scrimmage with the quarterback able to clearly communicate what we need to do without alarming anybody and then getting clearly into the cadence that our guys can jump.”
Growing pains were always expected this season with Williams in his second year and Johnson installing a new system. Mistakes were inevitable. But that also doesn’t mean the Bears will subscribe to a “full tolerance” policy, particularly with so many of the elementary errors made during training camp being reflected in Monday’s season opener.
“It’s not OK,” Doyle said. “It’s not.”
Make no mistake, the coaches have communicated as much this week.
For the Bears offense, the focus on huddle command and pre-snap crispness has heightened again. Recurring shakiness will not be accepted. Thus, every ounce of grace and understanding offered by the coaching staff has been combined with a triple dose of urgency.
“The biggest thing is we have set a consistent ‘championship standard,’” Doyle said. “That’s why you see Caleb and the rest of the players being coached so hard all the time. The standard is the baseline. And it’s either up to our standard or it’s not. And when it’s not, it’s getting coached.
“Sure, there’s an element of patience involved. But when you’ve set the standard at the very beginning, every single day you must work to reach it.”
Players have been eager in responding to those demands.
“You go back to work and you practice it until it’s right,” Jackson said. “At the start of practice. During practice. Throughout practice. It’s a non-stop process.”
Added Moore: “You have to pay attention to every small miscue and every small detail to get to where you really want to go. We definitely can get this under wraps if we really work on it. Which we are.”
Sunday afternoon should offer a telling progress report plus a glimpse into one of the most important Year 2 steps for Williams in his ability to show growth with his operational command and use of the snap count.
“We want to use cadence as a weapon,” Doyle said. “It’s something we have been working on since we got here. Obviously it’s a work in progress. But the messaging is that there’s an expectation that we get better every week.”
Another big test awaits.
(Photo: Melissa Tamez / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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