I think both of our coordinators were affected by personnel issues, but they also both got out-coached.
Bears defense didn’t worry about respecting our receivers (understandably… although I assume they put added emphasis on containing Deebo) and focused on loading the box and bringing pressure. If Terry were out there, I question whether Chicago rolls with the same scheme. Almost everything looked difficult. Daniels faced a lot of quick pressure. I was waiting on max pro, double move calls and we finally got it with Lane. McCaffrey did a good job showing as a blocker to get wide open on his td. Ertz had a great fake outside before cutting inside for a nice gain. Maybe those latter two aren’t considered “double moves”, but they have the same effect. We had the one RPO pass that got called back… I think we could have called more of those, but as pure PA (or PA with Daniels taking off if the look wasn’t open). I think Kliff needed to do a lot more (and earlier) to get the defense to back off the LOS.
Pains me to say it, but Ben Johnson just had his way with our defense. We got “lucky” on D with the Bears making some mistakes (and that bogus illegal formation call on their td). Williams isn’t even a good qb. Mariota might have put up 40 against our D. In Whitt’s defense, they have a lot of quality weapons, but I think he probably needed to put numbers in the box - try to stuff their run game and fluster Williams with pressure. Instead, seems like he picked a middle ground and got beat both ways, on the ground and in the air. Again, personnel’s a factor. Another quality cover corner, a stud DE opposite Armstrong, a better coverage LB or a better safety duo… any of those could help Whitt in terms of scheming.
Both coaches seemed to lean into what the stats said - Chicago couldn’t run the ball and couldn’t stop the run - and didn’t do nearly enough to scrap the plans they accordingly came in with. But I don’t really know, that’s just my impression.
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