Chicago Bears: The good, bad, and ugly from Week 8 loss to the 49ers
The ugly — the defense
In addition to the offense struggling in the second half, the defense broke down repeatedly. Some might say that it was just in the second half, but they were caught in mismatches in the first half as well but Garoppolo was just off and his receivers dropped some passes.
Linebacker Roquan Smith acknowledged the bad effort and just wanted to move on from it. After recording a season-high 13 tackles last week, he only had five against San Francisco and had two missed tackles.
"It’s embarrassing and it’s not the standard. There’s not much else to be said about it besides it sucked and we’ve got to do better. We’ve got to."
The Niners had 467 total yards of offense. Garoppolo completed 17 of 28 passes for 322 yards. He had no touchdowns or interceptions but he had two rushing touchdowns when San Francisco had the ball inside the Bears’ five.
This defensive effort was reminiscent of what happened in Week 1 against the Los Angeles Rams. Matthew Stafford completed big passes at will then as well.
Without Mack, the pass rush could not get to Garoppolo. They had no sacks and no quarterback hits on him. He had all day to find open receivers.
The key play of the game occurred in the third quarter. San Francisco had a third and 19 from their own 16. Garoppolo completed a pass to Deebo Samuel. Samuel took the ball 83 yards to the Chicago Bears’ one. Three plays later Garoppolo got his first touchdown run.
From there it was all San Francisco. Garoppolo completed five straight passes for 75 yards as the Niners scored 17 more points.
The Bears’ defense also had trouble with San Francisco’s running game. The Niners gained 145 yards in the game. Of those, 137 came from Elijah Mitchell.
The Niners scored on every drive except for their first drive when Joey Slye missed a 48-yard field goal and their last drive when they were in victory formation.
There was nothing nice about this defensive effort. The best thing to do is forget this game and hopefully, Mack and Jackson come back fully healthy next week against the Pittsburgh Steelers and the pass rush appears once again.