DETROIT — As the final minutes ticked off the clock Sunday at Ford Field, Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams found himself watching from the sideline.
With the score well out of hand, coach Ben Johnson decided it wasn’t worth risking injury with his starting quarterback. He pulled Williams from the game and inserted backup Tyson Bagent.
“In that situation, it sucks that your guys are out on the field and you’re not,” Williams said. “And that’s frustrating because you put (in) so much time, energy and effort, and those guys are out there still battling and you’re on the sideline.”
It allowed Williams plenty of time to reflect on what exactly happened during Sunday’s 52-21 beatdown at the hands of the Lions.
Williams watched the clock hit zero. Johnson ran to midfield for a postgame handshake with his former boss, Lions coach Dan Campbell, that felt anticlimactic given the drubbing his team took all afternoon.
“When you’re around this league long enough, these games happen,” Johnson said afterward. “It doesn’t feel any better when it happens. But the good teams I’ve been on, they find a way to respond, and I know our guys will do that.”
The Lions reminded the Bears who the top dog is in the NFC North. The Green Bay Packers might have something to say about it before the season is up, but the Lions have won the last two division titles.
The question of how the Lions would adjust without Johnson calling the offense — a question that was at the front of everyone’s mind after an ugly performance against those Packers in Week 1 — was definitively answered Sunday. The Lions totaled 511 yards of offense. Quarterback Jared Goff threw for 334 yards and five touchdowns. Amon-Ra St. Brown caught nine passes for 115 yards and three scores.
The Bears gave up 50 points for the first time since 2014. The Lions ran circles around them.
There wasn’t a whole lot to say, especially for the Bears who were trying to defend Goff, St. Brown and the Lions.
“You go back to work,” defensive tackle Grady Jarrett said. “Second game of the season, man, obviously it was an ugly, ugly, ugly loss.”
Yes, that’s three uglies for anyone counting.
“It’s a look-in-the-mirror game for sure,” safety Kevin Byard said. “I think we all can play better. Just not the performance we wanted to put out there today.”
Those were the assessments coming from the two team captains who represent the defense. The final score is certainly alarming, as it would be for any team.
It started right from the get-go. Goff and St. Brown connected for a 34-yard gain on the first play from scrimmage, which set up a quick score on the opening possession.
The Lions offense never really slowed down from there. At one point they scored 24 unanswered points. They punted just three times in the game.
“We simply didn’t affect the quarterback,” Johnson said. “We tried to mix up the coverages and they hurt us a little bit in some of our single-high (safety) stuff with their speed. So the explosive plays are an issue. You feel those.”
The Bears did not record a sack in the game. Goff, who completed 23 of 28 passes, connected on eight of his 11 pass attempts that traveled at least 10 yards beyond the line of scrimmage, per NFL Next Gen Stats. Those eight completions went for 241 yards and two touchdowns. He was also 12-for-14 passing off play-action.
His longest was a completion over the middle to Jameson Williams, who scampered for a 64-yard gain. On the next possession, Goff hit Williams on a deep ball for a 44-yard touchdown.
“The quarterback, for them, really got after us and made us hurt,” Johnson said, referencing a player with whom he worked intimately with over the last three years.
On the other side, the Bears turned the ball over twice and failed to convert on two fourth-down tries, both from inside their territory. Caleb Williams threw two touchdowns to receiver Rome Odunze, but the offense couldn’t keep up with the Lions.
The quarterback finished 19-for-30 passing for 207 yards with two touchdowns and one interception. The Lions sacked him four times.
“I always expect to come out and play well on offense,” Williams said. “That’s the expectation. It’s not really necessarily surprising or anything like that. It’s a new coach. New offense and all that. We’re all trying to figure it out together as one.”
The Bears will have much to figure out over the coming weeks. That’s in all facets of the game.
“We have a lot of prideful guys,” Johnson said. “We’re two games into the season. I think they’re just as disappointed as the coaching staff is. And we’re committed to getting this thing right. I have a lot of belief in them.”