The Bears lost to the Commanders 12-7 on Thursday night, but it doesn’t take much of an imagination to see how they could have come out on top.
Chicago made three trips inside the Washington 5-yard-line without coming up with points. One drive ended with a Justin Fields pass deflecting off a helmet into Commanders defensive lineman Jonathan Allen’s arms, another ended with Khalil Herbert being stuffed for no gain, and the final possession of the game saw Darnell Mooney catch a pass just short of the end zone on fourth down.
Those failures meant the Bears lost despite outgaining the Commanders 392-214 and one might imagine that it would lead to the team’s head coach lamenting quarterback Justin Fields’ inability to get the team into the end zone. Bears head coach Matt Eberflus went a different direction after the game when it came to assessing Fields’ outing, however.
“I think he took a step forward,” Eberflus said, via Courtney Cronin of ESPN.com. “I really do. Because, the toughness. For me, the ability to take the ball and drive it down at the very end to give us a chance to win it, that’s to me what was the improvement. OK? Was there other moments that we need to clean up and offense needs to clean up? Sure. But we had the drives down there and if we punch those in, the game’s a different game. That’s 21 points. So for me, that was really inspiring to watch him do that at the very end, to take us down to win it at the very end. And again, we came up short. We’ve got to do a better job next time.”
With a lot of football still to play this year, it’s easy to understand why Eberflus would be looking for the bright side after Thursday’s loss but there are only so many opportunities that a team can miss before the tune will have to change in Chicago.