Monday Night Football was an opportunity for the Seahawks and Bears to prove if they could turn a weakness into a strength immediately with a midseason trade, but more importantly which team would be better setup for the second half of the season and a higher seed in the playoffs.
Unfortunately it seems that even though Quenton Nelson was all that the Seahawks hoped he would be, Seattle chose Monday to turn some of their strengths into their weaknesses—namely the worst special teams performance of the Mike Macdonald era and awful red zone defense.
Bears 34, Seahawks 17
Not only did Jason Myers shank an extra point and have a short field goal blocked, but the Seahawks gifted Chicago so many unnecessary free yards on punts and kickoffs that Seattle’s defense bent until it broke.
Rodney Thomas touched a punt already downed at the 1 and rolled into the end zone (Bears scored a TD)
Mike Morris was called for a 15-yard penalty (Bears scored a TD)
Irv Charles was called for a 15-yard penalty (Set Seahawks drive back at their 11, drive ended in an INT)
15 yards is an explosive play. Period. Seattle’s special teams gifted the Bears three explosive plays and we may as well call that a 21-point swing … at least to some degree. The Thomas mistake preceded Chicago going for it on fourth-and-one at their own 44, presumably not a decision Ben Johnson would make on his own 24.
The Seahawks’ first three losses of the season all had costly mistakes obviously, but this has been the only time that Seattle just looked like a bad team.
Credit to the Bears for looking like a great team and Johnson certainly proving himself to be a fair match for the defending Super Bowl champion defensive coordinator. I think the Seahawks did a great job against Caleb Williams actually—and that he looked like the best quarterback who Seattle has faced yet this season.
Sam Darnold — nor anybody on offense besides Jaxon Smith-Njigba — can feel “great” about Monday night.
Darnold was inaccurate. The pass protection was awful. The run game was worse than mediocre. There isn’t a single adequate number two receiver or tight end on the entire roster.
The fact that JSN plays with THIS offense and had six catches for 118 yards and a touchdown (with another big catch wiped out by a shameful flag that should’ve never been thrown) only further cements his case for Offensive Player of the Year.
However, there wasn’t one player or play responsible for Monday’s loss.
The special teams was bad. Situational defense was bad. Nearly every player and coach was bad. And the Seahawks were at home in primetime against a team that had played much worse in many of their previous seven games than they did on Monday.
I guess for now the Bears can claim they did more to help their team than Seattle did. Maybe because the Seahawks were looking at the wrong weakness.
What did you think of MNF and do you think the Brian Fleury era should end?
Let me know in the comments!
This was the first time in two years I've seen us actually get beat by another team. Yes, we also did plenty to beat ourselves, but we also looked ill-matched against a better team. Fleury kept calling these ridiculous little pitches and attempts at runs on early downs, failing back-to-back with the same crappy play call which ended up putting us in third and long, when everybody in the house knows a pass has to come.
I could go on and on about this game and what went wrong. Anyone who's read my comments before knew that I felt that the jury was out on Fleury because there were just too many variables, but tonight he very clearly looked bad.
Sam was inaccurate and nearly caused Horton to get killed. His passes were off, just enough to screw up the play. He threw two Int's. This one's on Sam, but the OL shares some of the shame.