CHICAGO (670 The Score) -- Bears quarterback Justin Fields barely moved. Slumped against the light wood paneling on the side of his locker, he was motionless as he stared 1,000 yards into the rug between his cleats, only breaking his gaze to fist bump the occasional teammate as they passed him on the way out. At one point, receiver Darnell Mooney walked over, still dressed from the waist down in his game uniform. The two sat next to one another, talking quietly as groups of media floated around them. Offensive coordinator Luke Getsy joined not long after, placing a reassuring hand on Mooney’s shoulder while he spoke. The three nodded in solemn agreement for a bit before Getsy grabbed the handle of his rolling luggage and walked out. In the background, cursing echoed loudly from the showers.
To be fair, there’s probably isn't much else to say when you lose by a few inches, as the Bears did in their 12-7 setback to the Commanders at Soldier Field. For all the Bears' incompetence Thursday night – and reader, there was plenty – it’s kind of astonishing just how close they came to winning a football game without actually winning it. If Mooney had fallen half-a-foot forward or not lost the ball in the lights, they would've left this mud fight with their third win of the season. Instead, the Bears (2-4) are going back on the road for games against the Patriots and Cowboys while sitting two games under .500 and riding a three-game losing streak. If it wasn’t obvious in any of the other losses, it’s officially official now -- coach Matt Eberflus has his work cut out for him.
“I told the guys, listen, we’re right there,” Eberflus said. “We’re right there. You’ve just got to keep believing. Keep believing what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and we’re right there. We’re going to get over that hump right there. They’ve got some time to self-reflect right now.”
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Losing three games in a row isn’t really a crisis for this team, and it’s not even all that surprising. But for the first time in Eberflus’ tenure, the real doozy isn’t necessarily that the Bears lost, but how. Losing divisional road games or to a Giants team that might actually be good is par for the course on a team whose best scoring chance Thursday was to 32-year-old tight end Ryan Griffin. (No offense to Ryan, who's accomplished way more in life than I have.) But the Commanders are bad. The Commanders are really, really bad. The Bears only scored seven points at home against perhaps the worst team in football while going 0-for-3 from inside the five-yard line and oh, by the way, they put up 392 yards of offense in the process. It’s not exactly the noble loss that last week’s was.
“Everybody is mad,” Fields said. “I mean, nobody is happy about this loss. Just we always get told that we're almost there, we're almost there. Like me personally, I'm tired of being almost there. Tired of being just this close. Feel like I've been hearing it for so long now.”
Through the first six weeks of the season, Eberflus’ “24-hour rule” has been enthusiastically endorsed by players in the locker room, win or lose. It’s an integral part of how the Bears structure their approach to the next week, they say, and a great way to find the emotional regulation needed to survive an NFL season. So far, the losses in Green Bay, and New York and Minnesota can probably all fall into the expected, albeit frustrating, outcome pile. There’s a certain inevitability to that for a young team that knows it’s in a learning season. But losing to the team that they did Thursday, in the way that they did, is uncharted territory for the Bears. (These Bears, I should say.) It'd be hard to blame them for taking a couple extra hours.
“It’s really just resetting and focusing on things we’ve got to fix,” running back Khalil Herbert said. “We’ve just got to find a way to get better, and use this as motivation.”
Cam Ellis is a writer for 670 The Score and Audacy Sports. Follow him on Twitter @KingsleyEllis.
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