CHICAGO (670 The Score) — Forget the details about what happened Sunday at Soldier Field.
The fine print matters much less than the fine mess the Bears suddenly find themselves in.
Nobody will remember the score everybody in town would soon forget anyway (Packers 38, Bears 20).
Nobody will recall how many more touchdown passes Jordan Love threw than Justin Fields (two), how many dumb penalties that Fields' teammates committed (seven) or how many easy yards the Packers accumulated (too many).
Nobody at Halas Hall really should care about anything but the big picture, not after a season-opening effort by the Bears that was as abysmal as it was embarrassing.
The NFL season started this week, but nobody told the Bears. Nobody apparently sent the memo to 1920 Football Drive in Lake Forest. Nobody informed coach Matt Eberflus and his overmatched, outsmarted staff that these games actually count.
It would be hard to find a team that looked any more ill-prepared for Week 1 than the Bears did, and please don’t even waste your time looking around the league. I’m not interested.
Save the comparisons about other teams in the NFC starting slow or looking sluggish. None of those teams were coming off a historically bad year and playing their rivals at home to begin a season in which everything was supposed to be different.
BREAKING: It wasn’t different.
The second season under Eberflus began just like the first one ended, and the 2023 Bears, after a supposedly transformational offseason exaggerated by so many, bear a striking resemblance to the awful 2022 team.
But this demoralizing defeat should be harder for everyone in Chicago to take than any suffered last season. This one can’t be rationalized in the name of tanking, can’t be excused because of a new coaching staff still on the honeymoon, can’t be chalked up to a young quarterback in Fields learning a new system. This one – which came against the dreaded PACKERS – can’t just be dismissed as one bad day in a 17-game season, nope, because of all the troubling issues on display for a national FOX audience and 62,456 fed-up fans.
The booing started, for the record, with 8 minutes and 55 seconds left in the second quarter. It might not end until January.
The Packers displayed the intensity and physicality the Bears failed to match in a rivalry game in name only after Green Bay’s ninth straight victory in it. Rivalries imply a different approach and level of effort that the Bears clearly just don’t grasp yet.
The Packers' 38 points were the most the Bears had allowed in an opening game since a 49-7 loss to the 49ers to start the 2003 season, according to Stathead. Not since 1968 had the Bears surrendered as many points in a season opener at home, that game a 38-28 loss to Washington at Wrigley Field. I really thought these Bears were done making history.
As Overreaction Monday looms in NFL cities everywhere, overreacting to this 18-point blowout – and it wasn’t that close – involves wondering if the Bears really could be the worst team in the league again.
Nothing that happened Sunday afternoon on the lakefront makes that such an outrageous statement. Nothing that happened as the Bears were badly outcoached suggests that Eberflus and his staff have any idea how to fix a problem that could start with them.
The Bears weren’t ready. The Packers were. The difference comes down coaching even if Eberflus disputed that his team wasn’t ready.
I asked Eberflus if he could see why observers might conclude based on the penalties, mistakes and the score that the Bears weren’t ready to play.
“I wouldn’t agree with that, no," Eberflus said.
The results betrayed his rhetoric on a day there were no bright spots until the final seconds ticked off the scoreboard clock.
The highlight of the day came at halftime when they introduced all the Bears attending the game as part of the alumni weekend. How unfortunate that so many former Bears players acknowledging the crowd could relate to the frustration current ones felt in the locker room.
It might be easier to take if Love resembled the next Hall of Fame quarterback behind center in Green Bay, but Love didn’t really do anything that made Chicagoans fear the next decade. There was a lot to like about Love but nothing to necessarily fall head-over-heels for. Love completed 15 of 27 passes for 245 yards, three touchdowns and a 123.2 passer rating but – relative to his Packers predecessors’ performances – overall his play was more solid than spectacular. He found the open guy, notably on a 37-yard heave to tight end Luke Musgrave, and came through on clutch third downs. But the Packers offense's 31-point, 329-yard output had as much to do with breakdowns by an inconsistent Bears defense than any breakthrough of a generational talent.
Love’s longest completion showed evidence of coaching absent from the Bears’ game plans. On the fifth play of the third quarter, Packers coach Matt LeFleur drew up a throwback screen that Aaron Jones took 51 yards to set up his one-yard touchdown run.
The Bears offense made Love’s development a moot point anyway. Packers backup Sean Clifford likely could have kept it close as poorly as the Bears offense performed.
Everything began to fall apart on the opening series, when offensive coordinator Luke Getsy seemed intent on proving he was the smartest guy in the stadium by channeling his inner Matt Nagy. On third-and-1, tight end Cole Kmet went in motion to line up behind center, bobbled the snap from center Lucas Patrick and got stuffed for no gain. The Packers stopped Fields on a fourth-down sneak at the Bears’ 40, but Getsy lost the plot on third down.
The opening drive of the season is a time to make a statement about what kind of football team you are or plan to be, not an opportunity to see if your favorite offseason gimmick play will work.
We all have seen too cute too often from the Bears in the past that we now sigh with a Chicago accent after such ridiculous plays. Whatever happened to handing the ball to a running back to get a tough yard? Must every Bears offensive coordinator offend our football sensibilities?
Another series included successive false starts, which reminded everyone just how little the Bears offensive line had played together since being remade. The biggest takeaway from the Bears offense was that preseason matters. The risk of injury hardly outweighs the risk of entering a season looking like a bunch of guys who met in the parking lot and drew up plays in the dirt.
Eberflus didn’t reject the notion of rethinking his preseason approach next July when I asked him about it postgame, but his answer understandably reflected a coach with more pressing concerns. Like getting a first down next Sunday in Tampa.
“You think about that as a head coach," he said.
As for Fields, objectively he gained little but experience – and does a quarterback who's now 5-21 as an NFL starter really need to learn the hard way any longer? When will it get easier? Fields hit 24 of 37 passes for 216 yards, one touchdown, one interception (which Quay Walker returned for a touchdown) and a 78.2 passer rating. Fields’ highlight came on a pretty 20-yard touchdown pass to Darnell Mooney, who caught four passes for 53 yards.
The Packers sacked Fields four times. He led the Bears with 59 rushing yards that no required all of his mobility. If you were looking for progress, you needed Bear goggles to see it.
But here’s the most maddening thing about Fields’ game from this seat in the press box: Getsy called plays as if Fields was a game manager instead of a game-breaker. The passing attack too often looked more horizontal than vertical.
If the Bears don’t trust Fields to threaten defenses downfield, why in the world should anybody outside the organization do so? This was the message Getsy sent by resisting any urge the stretch the defense and take his shots: We believe Fields is more likely to make a mistake than a big play.
Maybe they know Fields best, maybe not. But if the Bears really believe that, then the coaching staff’s reluctance to let Fields test his arm in the season opener with an improved receiving corps made a statement nobody will want to acknowledge.
On a day that might have revealed truth nobody wants to admit.
“Overall, it’s a learning experience," Eberflus said.
Exactly.
But it’s what we learned about the Bears that made it feel even worse.
David Haugh is the co-host of the Mully & Haugh Show from 5-10 a.m. weekdays on 670 The Score. Click here to listen. Follow him on Twitter @DavidHaugh.