Bears Secure Playoff Seed Despite Loss to Lions
Despite the 19-16 loss to the Detroit Lions, the Bears secured the second seed in the NFC playoffs on Sunday, thanks to Washington’s victory over Philadelphia. Bears coach Ben Johnson wasn’t in the mood to celebrate despite the opportunity to play multiple home games in the postseason, given his team’s performance in the last game of the regular season.After a difficult week against the San Francisco 49ers, Chicago suffered its second consecutive loss after failing to score for three quarters.“I didn’t like the offense today,” Johnson said.
Ben Johnson
Quarterback Caleb Williams noted that the Bears didn’t show the proper energy in the game, which forced them to play from behind.“We’ll have to analyze the tape and figure out why it was that way,” Johnson said. “I didn’t feel like it was one of our more elaborate plans. I felt like it was one of our more simple plans. We need to do a better job of executing it and training it.”
Ben Johnson
When asked about his biggest takeaway from the loss, Williams characterized the Bears’ game as “not good enough to win.”“We came out a little flat, and I think we need to work on having urgency from the start and getting that going,” Williams said.
Caleb Williams
Chicago entered the final quarter losing 16-0 and scored their first points when Williams connected with Jahdae Walker for a 25-yard touchdown with 14:20 left in the game. Williams’ touchdown pass broke the franchise’s single-season passing record, which had been held by Erik Kramer (3,838 yards) since 1995. Williams finished the season with 3,942 passing yards and was 58 yards short of becoming the first Bears quarterback in history to throw for 4,000 yards. “We need to win the game,” Williams said. “I didn’t want to let another team put us in the seed we want. I don’t know what happened with that game, but we didn’t execute how we needed to. That number is the number and so be it.” The Bears looked poised to pull off another late comeback when they tied the score 16-16 after Colston Loveland scored a 1-yard touchdown, followed by Cole Kmet’s 2-point conversion. Chicago had another scoring opportunity after Kevin Byard intercepted Lions quarterback Jared Goff with 2:23 left, marking the safety’s seventh interception of the season, which leads the league. The Bears quickly went three-and-out and decided to punt on fourth-and-five from their own 31-yard line “because we had three timeouts and felt we were going to get the ball back,” Johnson said. The Bears never got the ball back as the Lions drove 39 yards down the field to set up the game-winning field goal. Chicago’s defense has conceded 1,313 yards in its last three games, including 433 to Detroit on Sunday. But Johnson continued to put the emphasis on Chicago’s offense for the reason the Bears fell short in Week 18.“We have to get better on both sides of the ball,” Williams said. “Talking about the offense, whatever happens on the other side of the ball, that’s not something we can control. We have to control what we can. We have to come out starting fast, being better, and we will do that here soon.”
Caleb Williams
The Bears won the NFC North despite finishing with a 2-4 record in division games. They join the 1971 49ers (2-4 in the NFC West), the 1982 Packers (1-2 in the NFC Central during the strike-shortened season), and the 2010 Chiefs (2-4 in the AFC West) as the only teams since the 1970 merger to have won their division despite having a losing record in division games. Chicago will host Green Bay, the NFC’s No. 7 seed, on Saturday (8 p.m. ET, Prime Video) at Soldier Field.“We can’t afford to have one phase, one of our three phases, play like we did today,” Johnson said. “So we’re going to have to get better. Like I said, I get excited just thinking about it right now, and I know our guys do too.”
Ben Johnson
