Bears keep heading south in NFC North as Vikings blast them 30-12

MINNEAPOLIS — Nothing about quarterback Caleb Williams’ rookie year has gone as expected. Looking ahead to a pivotal offseason, the one thing the Bears can’t allow is for it to fully disintegrate.

Yet there are signs the wheels are falling off. And at a time when nothing matters as much as Williams’ development, neither he nor his supporting cast is managing to stay sturdy.

The Bears dropped their eighth consecutive game Monday night — this time predictably getting trucked 30-12 by the Vikings in a nationally televised game — to tie the second-longest losing streak in franchise history.

When they fell behind 27-6 with 10 minutes left, Williams had completed 14 of 23 passes for 157 yards with no touchdowns for an 81.3 passer rating. The Bears (4-10) have a ton of problems, but they’re not going anywhere with him playing like that.

A team that had appeared loaded with skill talent never imagined it would have one of the worst passing attacks — and one of the worst offenses in general — in the NFL.

“I can’t even pinpoint it because there’s so many issues,” tight end Cole Kmet told the Sun-Times. “We can’t run the ball effectively most of the time, and when you can’t run the ball, you can’t get to the [passing] stuff that you want. You get disjointed overall.”

Williams finished 18-for-31 for 191 yards and threw his only touchdown pass after the Bears blocked a Vikings punt when they were down by 21. He had an 86.9 passer rating, tracking closely with his number for the season.

The Bears put backup quarterback Tyson Bagent in the game for their final possession, conceding defeat.

They have failed Williams, but he’s responsible for this, too. The tangled mess of blame was evident Monday on a disastrous play in the first quarter. Without left tackle Braxton Jones, who was out because of a concussion and has had a rough season anyway, the Bears started rookie Kiran Amegadjie. When Williams dropped back on third-and-nine from the Vikings’ 29-yard line, outside linebacker Jonathan Greenard ran right past Amegadjie and hit Williams square in the back of the shoulders. The ball bounded away, recovered by linebacker Blake Cashman, and the Vikings soon scored for an early 10-0 lead.

If Williams truly is the Bears’ future, they need to do better than leaving him exposed to a hit like that. But Williams also didn’t see it coming and couldn’t find a way to get rid of the ball or at least hold on to it and take a sack.

“He can’t see the defender coming, so I can’t expect him to have eyes in the back of his head,” interim coach Thomas Brown said. “I can do a better job calling a play that gets the ball out faster.”

For the third game in a row, the Bears were shut out in the first half, this time 13-0. At that point, they were 0-for-5 on third down. Running back D’Andre Swift had come up short on two fourth-and-ones. And the Bears had 107 yards of total offense and just one drive longer than 25 yards, thanks to a Vikings penalty on a punt.

Williams completed 7 of 9 passes for just 60 yards in the first half and threw just one pass more than five yards beyond the line of scrimmage — discouraging at a time when the Bears want to see him be more aggressive and create downfield threats.

“To throw the ball downfield, you’ve got to protect,” Brown said.

The Bears didn’t score until Cairo Santos’ 29-yard field goal with 7:02 left in the third quarter, at the end of a malfunction-riddled sequence in which they worked backward from first-and-goal at the 1 to fourth-and-11. Williams was 0-for-3 passing once the Bears got inside the Vikings’ 30.

As the Bears keep trying to get a quarterback off the ground, the Vikings keep finding ways to thrive with whoever walks in the door. They reset their organization in 2022 at the same time the Bears did when they hired Poles and Eberflus, going with Kwesi Adofo-Mensah as GM and offensive-minded Kevin O’Connell as coach.

Guess who got it right. The Bears are
14-34 under Poles. The Vikings are 32-16, tied for the fifth-best record in the NFL over the same span.

With the latest loss, Williams and the Bears are now six or more games behind the Lions, Vikings and Packers, all of whom are headed toward the playoffs. The Bears are the only NFC North team heading south.

“Going forward? Not good, not good, not good,” Kmet said. “This is going to be a tough end to the year here, and that’s reality. Anybody saying otherwise — there’s a lot of work to do. A lot.”