Everybody — breathe. It’s been a few days since the Bears, well, how can I say it, awful loss on the road against the Packers. While the defense gave them no favors, the offense was abysmal, and quite frankly difficult to watch. The simple question surely on the mind of many Bears fans is, what was Luke Getsy thinking? What we watched was a complete 180 compared to what we were promised, and what we saw all throughout preseason. There’s really one simple answer: Getsy was trying to do too much. Let’s discuss.
Getsy had pretty awful management of personnel. The alternating of Teven Jenkins and Lucas Patrick at the right guard needs to end. While yes, it is good for Patrick to get run while nursing his snapping hand, taking away from Jenkins is unfair. Jenkins has been, and continues to be the most reliable and effective blocker in the offensive line room. Taking him away from the line only hurts the team.
Fullback Khari Blasingame was so effective when on the field, that the overall net offense was +110 total when he was out there. Prevalent in the first drive especially, he was taken out after that. He did not return until midway through the 3rd quarter. Taking out such a productive offensive player for continuity was damaging to the flow of the offense.
Cole Kmet and Darnell Mooney, labeled to be the most key members of our offense this year, have been out-produced by Dante Pettis and Ryan Griffin. In Sunday’s game, Kmet had 0 catches. Mooney went negative with only one catch. Scheming out your most talented playmakers with the biggest connection with your quarterback is damaging to the offense.
Getsy is grossly mismanaging Justin Fields. While I will be the first to admit Justin had a poor game, he got no help from Getsy’s playcalling. The first offensive drive was methodical, effective, and fast. They ran the ball early which opened up the secondary for a 30 yard pass for Fields — then finishing off with a flurry of more Montgomery runs, and a Fields designed run to score. That was great right? Surely they continued this style of offense, right?
Wrong.
Getsy responded by running the most conservative offensive scheme possible. Montgomery had more rushing attempts than Fields had passing attempts. 15>11. Passing the ball a grand total of 11 times while being down 2 scores for almost the entire game is not how you get back into football games, especially when the opposing quarterback is Aaron Rodgers. With the exception of one drive, there were no early down short passes used to get Fields in any sort of rhythm. Instead, running the ball on 2nd down was seen as the more attractive option. After that first drive, the Bears had three straight 3 and outs. Fields was forced to be a pocket passer once again. There were rarely any, if any at all plays designed for Fields to leave the pocket and either make a play on the run or use his legs himself. The pocket was collapsing almost the entire game and Getsy did not make the adjustments necessary to put Fields in a position to play his game.
