Bears report card: Defense the star vs. Titans

Thank God for the Bears defense, a group that is still getting better every week, is one of the best in the game, may have played its best game of the season in Nashville, and is a joy to watch.

So let's keep it simple this week and let's just give the defense a B-plus to allow more space to break down what's going wrong on offense.

Taking away Derrick Henry (68 yards) and holding the Titans to 3 yards per carry on 31 rushes, and still limiting their passing game and the NFL's sixth-ranked passer Ryan Tannehill to 136 net yards through the air was brilliant.

Just a handful of plays - an awkward missed tackle by Eddie Jackson on an A.J. Brown 38-yard scamper, Buster Skrine in perfect coverage forgetting to get his head around to knock away the 40-yard dime Tannehill dropped on Brown for Tennessee's first touchdown, and one 26-yard yard Henry run - kept this game from being the first A of the season.

Quarterback: Nick Foles was slightly better Sunday and his numbers 36-for-52, 335 yards, 2 TDs, 99.4 rating are pretty good until you dig a little deeper.

The 69% completion percentage is great but the 5.8 average per pass thrown is woefully inadequate and why the percentage is so high.

Let's be fair, the line is a huge problem and Foles is left at times to heroic measures, but his clock was still off Sunday and a number of the third down misses - 2-for-15, 13.3% - were due to anticipating pressure rather than feeling it.

Without knowing the play calls it is impossible to know much of the time whether Foles is choosing his first, second or third option, but it is clear he is leaving bigger plays on the field too often in his hurry to get the ball out, again sometimes justified, sometimes not. B-minus

Running backs: Basically these guys did what they could and Cordarrelle Patterson ran particularly hard Sunday.

Finally given a chance out of necessity Ryan Nall made a few plays and further begged the question why doesn't he get more chances?

While it's going to happen occasionally when a 300-pounder gets a hat on the football no matter what you do, this grade drops because at that point in the game David Montgomery can't let it happen and it turned out to be the winning points. C-plus

Receivers and tight ends: Why doesn't Allen Robinson have a new contract? He's an A every week.

Other than an unfortunate penalty by Darnell Mooney and Anthony Miller trying too hard and making the same mistake as Montgomery, these guys played well, but other than Robinson they don't give much help when it comes to blocking the run.

Our long awaited look at Riley Ridley gave absolutely no indication as to why it took so long and left us wanting to see more.

At tight end Jimmy Graham had his best day as a receiver helping out in the red zone and between the 20s, but for whatever reason Cole Kmet was MIA again, and the Bears have to stop selling this story about Graham improving as a blocker. B-minus

Offensive line: Let's just say it wasn't as bad as it could have been ... but it wasn't much better.

Considering the challenge Alex Bars acquitted himself very well leaving me anxious to see him get a whole game at guard or tackle.

Arlington Hambright was pretty much what we expected, but what I didn't expect was Rashaad Coward showed almost nothing at tackle, and Charles Leno and Germain Ifedi did enough dumb things to be as much a part of the problems as the kids.

Some of it I'm sure was communication issues that take far more time to fix than they had to get ready, but the bottom line is it's hard to see the offense improving if this group is intact Monday night. D-plus

Special teams: Patrick O'Donnell was actually brilliant at times but punt coverage is becoming a bit of an issue, and it's hard to know if part of the problem is him out-kicking his coverage without enough hang time?

The fake punt to Barkevious Mingo was excellently conceived and executed, Dwayne Harris had one outstanding punt return and all else was as it should be. B

Coaching: Ultimately it was an ugly loss and the buck stops with Matt Nagy. But considering everything that went on in the previous 96 hours, what more could we expect? Again, the defensive plan was really good. B