Who is to blame for the bears? Responsibility for such a heavy loss runs through the entire franchise

CHICAGO – Fans cheered and chanted for the head coach to be fired. They went en masse to the exit.

There was an all too familiar silence in the locker room. The players who spoke were stunned and had no answers to the obvious.

How did the Chicago Bears get here?

“I can’t put it into words,” wide receiver DJ Moore said. “Difficult loss. Go back to the drawing board and just be real with ourselves.”

No one in the locker room will play the blame game, but losing 19-3 at home to the New England Patriots is an institutional failure. Every decision leading up to this point deserves scrutiny, whether it was something as small as quarterback Caleb Williams throwing a swing pass to Moore instead of delivering it or something as drastic as the front office deciding to retain head coach Matt Eberflus .

That’s how bad a loss was in this situation. As Eberflus said when asked about the offensive coordinator position, “Everything will be looked at.”

“It was pretty bad,” tight end Cole Kmet said. “There is a lot that needs to be corrected.”

Just a fortnight ago, the 4-2 Bears played a flexible afternoon game against the Washington Commanders. Everything seemed to be going in the right direction after a three-game winning streak and a bye to fix what wasn’t working: the first quarter offense and the run defense.

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Now the Bears are 4-5. They have been shut out in the first quarter in five straight games. They had one of their worst offensive performances in years against a 2-7 Patriots team that ranked 26th in yards allowed per play allowed, 27th in yards allowed per pass allowed, 28th in sacks per pass and 27th in third .

The Bears responded by putting up 142 yards of offense and 4.0 yards per pass. They allowed nine sacks for the seventh time in franchise history and went 1-for-14 on third down.

If that combination sounds familiar, it was a similar refrain last week after a 29-9 drubbing of the Arizona Cardinals.

Given the opportunity to respond to a loss to the Commanders in an unimaginable way, the Bears were defeated by the Cardinals in all three phases. When they had a chance to bounce back and get a necessary win before the division played a last-place team, they couldn’t move the football.

Rookie quarterback Drake Maye and a two-win Patriots team embarrassed the Bears on Sunday at Soldier Field. (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

One of the themes after the game from Eberflus and Williams was that the Bears have the players. If you go up and down the list, they do. The offensive line was in tatters on Sunday and struggled even when healthy, but this is one of the better Bears squads in the post-Lovie Smith era.

Williams accepted blame for his role in the losses. He has completed 50.5 percent of his passes over the past three games. His accuracy is gone. He can’t get the ball away fast enough. However, much of that is to be expected from a newcomer, even one as billed as Williams.

If the Bears have the quarterback and the players around them, how did the organization screw this up?

• Offensive coordinator Shane Waldron simply hasn’t put the offense in a position to succeed. Running back D’Andre Swift had his moments on Sunday, but then we saw the run halted. Too much was put on a hyped offensive line, and therefore on Williams. The rookie quarterback acknowledged his mistakes on third down, but like the past two weeks, this plan isn’t getting him any layups. We saw Patriots quarterback Drake Maye get some nice, easy chunk plays to open up receivers. That didn’t happen for Williams, and he has better receivers.

• On February 22, Eberflus stood at the lectern in Halas Hall to introduce Waldron. He praised the team’s two-week process of bringing in the coordinators. He thanked his bosses for the resources that allowed him to travel the West Coast and interview actors. The stakes were high with the No. 1 pick and the fact that Eberflus’ first choice as offensive coordinator, Luke Getsy, didn’t work out. He chose Waldron. He opted to promote Chris Morgan to game coordinator and pair him with Waldron. How the Bears got to Waldron, and how they built this offensive staff as well, has rightly come under heavy criticism.

For the second week in a row, Eberflus took full responsibility after the match, saying, “I take responsibility for it.”

“The whole thing,” he said. “How it works: attack, defense, kicking. That is the job of the head coach. So for me that means responsibility for everything.”

Eberflus knows that everything that happens reflects on him, but the coordinator’s decision also looms over him, as does the blame for Sunday’s dismal performance. The Bears put themselves in this position. Their actions in case of violation mean a serious investigation into everything that led to it.

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• General manager Ryan Poles and his staff built a roster that looks nothing like the one he inherited in 2022, but a three-game losing streak that has put pressure on the coaching staff begs the ultimate question: Could Eberflus have season should be maintained? ? While the Poles improved the depth of the offensive line, given how many times Williams has been sacked, shouldn’t he have done more to strengthen the starters?

• This also goes beyond Poland for president/CEO Kevin Warren, who in his first offseason had the opportunity to make a major change to help the infrastructure that would have the best chance to keep the quarterback ship to get back on track. Warren, whose plans for the downtown stadium have stalled while the team is on land in Arlington Heights, could still be the wild card that would allow this version of the Bears to make moves heading into the season.

• And then it goes to Chairman George McCaskey, whose search committee identified Poland and Eberflus nearly three years ago. Under McCaskey’s tenure, the Bears have won zero playoff games, are on their fifth head coach and third GM and could move on to their 10th offensive coordinator.

With Williams, Moore, Swift, Kmet, Keenan Allen and Rome Odunze on offense, the Bears scored 3 points against the Patriots at Soldier Field.

When the offense blows up in such spectacular fashion after weeks of talk about team meetings and accountability, that’s the kind of loss that affects everyone in the organization.

Sunday would mark a return to .500, a chance to take advantage of a rebuilding Patriots team before the Green Bay Packers come to town. Instead, it was one of the Bears’ biggest losses in years.

And that says something.

(Top photo of Caleb Williams getting fired by Jahlani Tavai: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)