Arkush: Boos echoing through Soldier Field Sunday had nothing to do with Halloween
For all practical purposes, the Bears' season ended Sunday at Soldier Field with 7:28 to play in the third quarter, when the 49ers were 3rd and 19 at their own 16-yard line with the Bears ahead 16-9.
How else do you explain the Bears leading for 38½ minutes, owning a 25:37-11:50 time of possession advantage, holding a 264-195 edge in total offense, allowing just 1 sack and not turning the ball over ... and then over the final 21½ minutes getting outscored 17-6, outgained 272-90, allowing 3 sacks and their first turnover, and giving up passes of 83, 23, 19 and 15 yards and runs of 39, 27, 12 and 11 yards?
I don't believe they quit consciously; there is too much character in that locker room.
But for whatever reasons, they waved the white flag halfway through that third period. And while I'm sure they will talk all this coming week about there being lots of football left to play, etc., the 49ers game was a gut check - and the Bears failed miserably.
They were badly outplayed and badly out-coached, which leads us to speculate whether Sunday also signaled the end of the Ryan Pace/Matt Nagy era as well.
Nothing is imminent. There's no upside to making those changes now and it's particularly unfair to pile on Nagy - he wasn't even present when his team came apart, stuck at home with COVID-19.
Only George McCaskey knows what's next for his coach and GM, but after Sunday's latest disaster, what are we to assume?
Sure, going without their head coach and their best player and leader, Khalil Mack, was a challenge.
But it had nothing to do with the 49ers having wide receivers running free all afternoon while you could count on one hand the times Justin Fields had a wide-open receiver to target.
There are only two choices when it comes to explaining that.
Either Fields just isn't ready, and he isn't seeing what he has to get the ball to his guys when they're running free - we'll get to Fields in a moment - or the scheme and design of this offense is seriously flawed.
Logically, the answer is somewhere in the middle.
How else were they out-coached by Kyle Shanahan and company?
That No. 1 pass rush in the league until two weeks ago never got close to even breathing on Arlington Heights' finest, Jimmy Garoppolo.
After another excellent half of football from Khalil Herbert - 13-66 rushing in the first half - the Niners made halftime adjustments that erased him in the second half, limiting him to just 6 yards on 10 carries
Herbert did suffer a scary injury on a botched handoff with 3:20 left in the third period but he also returned later.
The Bears had no answers to those adjustments.
Near one-third of the Bears' offense came on Justin Fields scrambles, and the notion that the offense was improved Sunday is silly.
Their 324 yards of offense are certain not to elevate them from 32nd to 31st in the league, but are likely to leave them further behind.
As for Fields, had his team not given the game away, it would have been a nice day of growth for him.
He had a couple of otherworldly runs and made a few special throws you only see from the really good-to-great ones.
But he also continued to fail to see as much or more as he read right, contributing at least in part to constantly having to throw into extremely tight windows and limiting any chance of overcoming all the other weaknesses of the Bears offense.
Fields will be fine if they can just keep him healthy while he continues to learn, and until they can put a scheme and enough talent around him to win in the NFL.
But any notion there is anything resembling reality in the constant sound bites we hear about this offense being close to clicking and taking off died an excruciatingly painful death Sunday, and it may finally have brought the defense down with it.
Even for Halloween, the Bears' performance Sunday was far too haunting to imagine, and their total collapse left us feeling the grim reaper might and perhaps should be right around the corner.
@Hub_Arkush