Quarterback Caleb Williams stepped backward with his left foot, signaling the motion. Veteran wide receiver Olamide Zaccheaus moved across the formation from his spot to the left. The snap came a beat too late, and by the time the ball was in Williams’ hands, Zaccheaus had nearly blown by him.
Williams tried to recover and stick the ball in Zaccheaus’ chest, but it ended up on the ground — a botched handoff on an end around. Williams had no choice but to fall on the fumble for a loss of 4 yards.
“Bad ballhandling,” Chicago Bears coach Ben Johnson said after the game.
“Anytime (the ball is) on the ground, it’s unacceptable,” offensive coordinator Declan Doyle said a few days later.
The worst part was this was the offense’s first snap during the Aug. 22 preseason finale in Kansas City. A false start on the next play moved things 5 yards farther back.
The night didn’t get much better. Johnson used words such as “disappointing” and “sloppy” to sum up the evening for the first-team offense.
Yes, it was a preseason game. But this was the final dress rehearsal for Johnson’s team. It came against the defending AFC champions, with Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs starters playing. And it was a prime-time matchup on the road in one of the NFL’s toughest environments.
The first snap set the tone. Williams and the starting offense scored just three points in three possessions before the Chiefs pulled their defensive starters.
“We have to get better in a hurry,” Johnson said.
It was nearly three months ago when Johnson declared his team wasn’t ready for prime time. Flash back to early June. The Bears were wrapping up mandatory minicamp. Players weren’t wearing pads yet and the offense wasn’t fully installed.
Asked about an interception Williams threw in practice, Johnson said: “We’re not ready for prime time yet. I think that was loud and clear over the last three weeks of play. But that’s to be expected.”
The Bears weren’t quite ready for prime time in Kansas City either. In a week, they won’t have a choice.
They open the season Sept. 8 on “Monday Night Football” against the Minnesota Vikings at Soldier Field. If the offense isn’t ready for prime time, there will be nowhere to hide. The nation will be watching, curious to see what Johnson’s offense looks like in Chicago and what Williams, last year’s No. 1 draft pick, has done to improve from Year 1 to Year 2.
Even back in May when the schedule was released, the Bears weren’t shy about the fact they already were thinking about this matchup.
“Anytime you can open up the season at your house, prime time, I can’t look past that,” veteran linebacker Tremaine Edmunds said then. “That’s a big game, you know what I mean?”
Veteran safety Kevin Byard added last week: “It’s always there, in the back of my mind, ever since the schedule was released.”
America will have just binge-watched 10 hours of football a day earlier and will be looking for a nightcap Monday. No matter how the night proceeds — good or bad — the reactions come Tuesday morning are sure to be over the top.
All the talk, the hype, comes to an end. It’s time to see the results. It’s time to see what Johnson has been cooking up.
The Bears have a rebuilt offensive line, highlighted by four-time Super Bowl champion Joe Thuney at left guard. They drafted playmakers in tight end Colston Loveland and wide receiver Luther Burden III. Williams and Johnson have embarked on a partnership that the franchise hopes can take Williams from promising prospect to NFL superstar.
The hype will crescendo as the 7:15 p.m. kickoff nears. But as Pro Bowl cornerback Jaylon Johnson so eloquently put it in April: “Hype don’t win you no games.”
Williams has looked both good — as evidenced by a 92-yard touchdown drive in a preseason game against the Buffalo Bills — and not so good, such as last week in Kansas City. The ebb and flow of practice has been similar.
Ben Johnson at various times has described life with a young, emerging quarterback in the NFL as two steps forward followed by one step backward. Progress isn’t always linear.
Williams played well in practice in the days leading up to the Bills game, and it showed on game day.
“He’s really been locked in,” Johnson said of that week.
Then there was a quick, five-day turnaround before the Chiefs game. The Bears practiced twice in between, only once in full pads. The fumble on the first snap was particularly disheartening. Presumably the first play of the game was one the offense repped the most.
Those should be the gimmes.
“We like to talk about if we get 70 plays in a game, those are 70 bullets for us to shoot for and we need for each one to count,” Johnson said. “We can’t be missing. We can’t be wasting (opportunities).”
Johnson intentionally threw a lot at the offense this summer. The idea was to overload early, then pare back as the calendar turns to September. The thinking, too, shifts in the regular season. In some ways, it’s less about what the offense is capable of (although that’s always part of the equation) and more about where Johnson and his staff see weaknesses in an opposing defense.
“You can see (Johnson’s) brain start to twist and turn, like: All right, this is what we can do now to put a defense in a tough position,” general manager Ryan Poles recently told the Tribune.
The first test is closing in. The countdown clock at Halas Hall marks every minute and second as 7:15 p.m. Sept. 8 nears.
The Vikings, with coordinator Brian Flores calling the defense, led the NFL in blitz rate each of the last two seasons. They’re going to try to overwhelm the rebuilt Bears offensive line. They’re going to disguise their blitzes in an effort to confuse Williams.
Johnson certainly will have a plan in place. As the Detroit Lions offensive coordinator, his teams went 5-1 against the Vikings. This, of course, is a different roster with different skill sets. He earned this opportunity because of his ability to exploit a defense with the weapons available to him.
It’s time to see it in action.
“It’s just more specific planning for an actual opponent, not just your teammates,” Thuney said. “It’s exciting. The season’s here. Week 1’s coming up.”
So, too, is prime-time football.