As the Bears continue to digest their first-round playoff exit, a thought surely has crossed the minds of everyone who was on the field for Sunday’s 16-15 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles: What could I have done differently?
It’s a difficult question to confront. But as players emphasized their loss wasn’t just about Cody Parkey’s tipped, double-doink miss, there are plenty of what-if questions that’ll linger for a long time around Chicago.
So in the interest of furthering the it-wasn’t-all-on-Parkey argument emanating from the locker rooms at Soldier Field and Halas Hall, here are five major what-if questions that, if the Bears had just changed one of them, could’ve meant they emerge with a win over the Eagles.
1. A fourth quarter three-and-out for the offense.
The Bears took over possession holding a 15-10 lead with 7:02 remaining in the fourth quarter. It was a spot in which the Bears had previously excelled leading up to Sunday: Against the San Francisco 49ers, holding a five-point lead, Mitch Trubisky led a 5:45 drive that ended only when Allen Robinson fumbled — otherwise, the Bears would’ve been able to kneel down for the final 1:52 of the game. A week later, against the Minnesota Vikings, Trubisky engineered a masterful 9:05 drive in the second half that ended with a touchdown and effectively sealed a season-ending win.
But this time, the drive sputtered in disappointing fashion. Jordan Howard lost two yards on the first play when linebacker Nigel Bradham came unblocked up the middle. Trubisky was sacked on second down with pressure enveloping him. And on third down, the Eagles rushed three, still generated pressure and forced Trubisky into a difficult check-down throw to Tarik Cohen, who had no chance of picking up the 19 yards necessary for a first down.
If the Bears don’t get behind the sticks on first down, this is an entirely different possession. Even generating just one first down would’ve affected how the Eagles would approach their ensuing drive, which instead began with 4:48 on the clock.
2. Pat O’Donnell’s shanked punt.
The ripple effect of that three-and-out was O’Donnell had to punt from the Bears’ 24-yard line — and then shanked his kick for only 36 yards. The Eagles took over possession at their own 40-yard line, needing to drive 60 yards with plenty of time to take the lead.
O’Donnell averaged 45 yards per punt during the regular season. Even an average punt by his standards would’ve added another nine yards onto the Eagles’ possession, making things all the more difficult against the league’s best defense.
3. A third-and-nine conversion to set up the go-ahead score.
Stopping the Eagles four times from the two-yard line proved to be too difficult a task, but the Bears will be disappointed they put themselves in that situation. Specifically, they got the Eagles into a third-and-nine at the 13-yard line, and then this happened:
The Bears got the Eagles into a third and nine in the red zone, but a well-designed and well-executed route by Alshon Jeffery and perfectly timed throw by Nick Foles converted it. Still: Third and 9 for the best defense in the NFL...need to make a stop here. pic.twitter.com/IeYBSYJT4l
— JJ Stankevitz (@JJStankevitz) January 7, 2019
The Bears would’ve had much better odds trying to stop the Eagles from converting a fourth-and-nine than fourth-and-goal from the two, needless to say.
4. 10 men on the field for Philadelphia’s first touchdown.
This was bizarre — a defense that had been so fundamentally sound and avoided self-inflicted mistakes for most of the season only had 10 men on the field when Foles threw a touchdown to tight end Dallas Goedert in the third quarter.
Safety Adrian Amos noticed the missing player — which would’ve been a nickel corner — prior to the play, and raced to cover Goedert (green arrow), who beat him in the end zone for a touchdown. The Bears only rushed four on the play, so had they had the 11th guy on the field, perhaps it wouldn’t have forced Amos to be in single coverage against Goedert. Allowing a touchdown would’ve been easier to swallow had the Bears at least had the proper number of players on the field.
“We were in the huddle and then they called a play, you know, that required a different personnel so I’m looking around and it wasn’t there, and then by the time it was like, alright, where everybody at, you’re looking and then the ball is snapped and you just gotta try to scramble to make a play,” Amos said. “It’s a bang-bang situation.
“If I look back, I don’t know what I would’ve did differently. You know, maybe you could say just call timeout but you’re taught not to just — that’s not our job to do that. I don’t know. It’s just an unfortunate set of circumstances on that entire drive. You have a couple penalties, not enough people — but that’s just one drive in the game. That was the first touchdown. That was early on. And we still had opportunities, plenty of opportunities to win the game.”
5. Converting a field goal, any field goal, into a touchdown.
The Eagles entered Sunday with the No. 1 red zone defense in the NFL, allowing touchdowns on just 44.6 percent of their opponents’ trips inside the 20. So it’s not surprising that the Bears didn’t manage to get a touchdown on any of their red zone possessions — but it’s more disappointing how it happened.
The Bears drove to the Eagles’ 24-yard line early in the second quarter, aided by an unnecessary roughness penalty on Michael Bennett and a tough 19-yard grab by Cohen. But the Bears’ drive stalled there, with Cohen getting stopped for no gain, then Trubisky passing to Robinson for no gain on second down. Trubisky scrambled for six yards on third down — the play on which he injured his heel — and the Bears had to settle for a 36-yard field goal.
The Bears had a couple of shots at the end zone toward the end of the second quarter, too, with Trubisky lucky to not be picked off in the end zone by safety Tre Sullivan and then throwing incomplete to Tarik Cohen from the Eagles’ 23-yard line. Nagy called for a Howard run to set up a short 29-yard field goal from Parkey.
The last one probably hurt the most, with Robinson’s 45-yard snag getting the Bears to the Eagles’ 21-yard line late in the third quarter. The next three plays: Incomplete pass, one-yard pass, four-yard scramble. Parkey connected on a 34-yard field goal and instead of taking the lead, the Bears settled to cut the Eagles’ advantage to one.
The circumstances of these three field goals were all different, but if the Bears could turn one of these sub-40-yard field goals into four more points, it could’ve entirely changed the complexion of Sunday’s game.
We’ll leave the final word here to Amos, though, who explained why he’s not going to let the missed opportunities of the Bears’ first playoff game in eight years consume him.
“On defense the only scored 16 points but it don’t matter whether they scored 30 and we lost or they scored 16 and we lost of they scored three points and we lost 3-0. It all feels bad,” Amos said. “It’s not one play, one situation that you can take that one play and be like alright, if this didn’t happen because you can take the same thing and say if we didn’t make these plays that we did make, that we wouldn’t be in the same position.”