Grading the sloppy Chicago Bears vs. the Minnesota Vikings in a slug fest
Sam checks in at the Bears' South Loop tailgate, which had Cassie's biggest fans
Sam Panayotovich checks in from the South Loop Bears' tailgates, where the Cassie Carlson's Fan Club grows by the game and not even children are exempt from light heckling.
It was a gross game on all accounts.
The Chicago Bears had little success. When they found success, good went bad quickly. It all ended with star quarterback Caleb Williams getting carted off with an injury in a slog of a loss.
Here's how we graded the Bears in their low-scoring loss to the Vikings.
Caleb Williams
The Bears’ franchise quarterback was doing whatever he could.
The Vikings defense brought pressure from every corner and that kept Williams from getting into a rhythm. Last week, it never felt like Williams was out of his rhythm.
Minnesota’s consistent pressure kept forcing Williams to bail out of the pocket before he was able to go through his progressions.
But, when it turned to the fourth quarter Williams got the Bears into scoring range.
Then, disaster struck as Williams had to leave the game and get carted off the field with an injury.
Grade: B-
Bears offensive line
It was a mixed bag.
After shuffling the lineup around in Week 1, the Bears kept the same plan in Week 2. The results weren’t much better.
The offensive line was tasked with keeping up with the Vikings’ blitz. They held up at times but it wasn’t enough.
The Bears struggled with penalties, and the offensive line was mostly at fault for that. Of the seven penalties the Bears committed in the first half, six were on offense. Most of them were pre-snap penalties.
Garrett Bradbury specifically had a rough day. He had four penalties called on him in the first half. Two were holding penalties and two were pre-snap fouls. That puts the Bears behind the sticks before the offense had a chance to get going.
Grade: D
Bears’ defense
On a day where the Bears’ offense was struggling to string anything together on a consistent basis, the Bears’ defense held its own.
After Week 1, when the Panthers were doing plenty of things on the Bears’ defense, they settled in at home. They kept big plays to a minimum and kept the team in the game.
They bent but never broke. The offense just never responded.
Grade: B
Bears’ offense
So much for all the talk of the Bears breaking the NFL scoring record. The offense fell completely backwards against the Vikings.
After just three points through the first three quarters, the only other thing the Bears did on a consistent basis was make mistakes.
The pre-snap execution was just egregious. There were too many illegal formation penalties that killed plays before they began.
Even when the offense had sustained success, the Bears fumbled the ball away. On a day where success was few and far in between, the Bears couldn’t sustain enough to look remotely close to what they looked like in Week 1.
Grade: D