Windy City Gridiron
Note: Due to unforeseen New Years plans, play reviews won’t be done this week. I will be doing a deep dive into play reviews next week to make up for the lack of them the last two weeks!
First and foremost: Happy New Years to all of you Windy City Gridiron faithful! I hope 2026 brings you all the happiness and blessings you deserve!
I don’t think any Bears loss has made me feel as inspired as the loss we had on Sunday Night Football against the San Francisco 49ers last week.
That’s a weird thing to say, thinking about it, but bear with me.
There have been many Bears games in the past where our defense just wasn’t on it’s A game, and the opposing teams’ offense boat races us. Take for example the 2014 Chicago Bears. After suffering a crushing 51-23 loss to the Tom Brady led New England Patriots, the Bears, coming out of a bye week, gave up an astounding 55 to rival Green Bay, a game in which the Packers went into halftime with a 42-0 lead.
While this is an example taken from perhaps the worst Bears defense ever fielded, there’s some parallels. We were a respectable to good offense during the Trestman era, (perhaps more so in 2013) the Bears defense struggled to stop teams from scoring, and in my cases that offense could not keep up.
On Sunday night that wasn’t the case.
Each time the 49ers swung, we swung back, even taking a late lead with a 29-yard Cairo Santos field goal. It came down to the final play, but the Bears would fall short to the 49ers 38-42, on a disjointed play due in part to the play call coming in late.
The Bears offense went blow for blow, on the road, in a playoff atmosphere, against a premiere NFC opponent, and it came down to the last play. And a lot of that is due in part to Bears quarterback Caleb Williams.
Williams shined on primetime, completing 25 of 42 passes for 330 yards, 2 touchdowns and a 100.3 Passer Rating (125.7 TPR). He was absolute money when his team was behind all night, and he connected on deep balls over and over again, hitting on all 4 of his deep attempts for 130 yards, 2 touchdown and a perfect 158.3 Passer Rating (for a little fun, that’s a 608.8 on the TPR model!)
And this isn’t just a one off thing, if you’ve been following the series you know he’s been steadily playing his best football of his career, in fact his numbers over the last 10 weeks are stellar, and some of his season long numbers have been incredible too.
A big play quarterback, with elite level sack avoidance and mobility, who also refuses to turn the ball over is a rare blend of quarterback that us Bears fans have never seen under center.
So often when it came to prime time I always had extreme levels...
