San Francisco 49ers defensive end Leonard Floyd sacks Bears quarterback Caleb Williams during Sunday’s game in Santa Clara, Calif.
AP
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — There was no sugarcoating it.
“We got our butts kicked. There’s no other way to say it,” Bears interim head coach Thomas Brown said.
Quarterback Caleb Williams: “We got our (expletive) kicked.”
Pro bowl pass rusher Montez Sweat: “If we had the answers, it would be a different outcome.”
Nobody had the answers in the Bears locker room. The San Francisco 49ers rolled through the Bears, 38-13, on Sunday at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.
Sunday could have signified the start of a new era for the Bears. It was the first game since the team fired head coach Matt Eberflus after the Thanksgiving loss to the Lions. Brown brought new energy to Halas Hall during the week. The vibes were moving in a positive direction. It was like a weight lifted off this team.
And then Sunday rolled around and the Bears took the field again.
From the jump, the Bears were outmatched. San Francisco scored touchdowns on three of its first four offensive possessions. The Bears trailed 24-0 at halftime. The 49ers amassed 319 total yards of offense in the first half, while the Bears managed four.
How does Brown reconcile with a stat like that?
“I don’t,” Brown said.
The interim coach bump, statistically, has some merits. Before Sunday, NFL teams were 13-11 over the past decade in the first game after firing a head coach during a season. Those teams had a combined winning percentage of .284 when they fired their coaches.
In other words, teams in the Bears’ situation tend to over perform. On top of that, the 49ers were on a three-game losing streak and they were without All-Pro left tackle Trent Williams, stud pass rusher Nick Bosa and the reigning NFL Offensive Player of the Year in running back Christian McCaffrey.
This game had all the right ingredients for a surprise. But Sunday’s effort could best be described as uninspired.
“Definitely surprised,” top receiver DJ Moore said. “Practice looked good. Our Friday (practice) was good. We all had the feeling that everything was good and we come out here and ain’t put up nothing, really. Just not the best.”
Certainly the 49ers remain one of the best-run organizations in the NFL. When their left tackle goes down, they have a capable replacement. When their star running back is sidelined, the next man doesn’t miss a beat.
Rookie running back Isaac Guerendo totaled 78 rushing yards and two touchdowns, plus 50 more yards receiving. Even without Bosa, the 49ers sacked Williams seven times. Williams has been sacked 56 times this season, which tops Justin Fields’ team record 55 sacks from 2022.
The chasm between a team like the 49ers — who have reached the NFC championship game four of the past five years, with two Super Bowl appearances — and the Bears was painfully apparent on Sunday.
The Bears drop to 4-9 on the season. They’ve lost seven consecutive games. The four teams remaining on the schedule are all currently occupying playoff spots in the standings.
Asked how he can keep the team motivated going forward, Williams suggested it’s not his job to make his teammates show up to work.
“My job is to lead,” Williams said. “The captains’ job is to lead from the front, even when it’s tough. My job is not to get you up to come into the facility to do your job, to come in and have after hours, treatment, all these different things. My job, and our job (as captains), is to go out there and lead the guys and lead the guys the right way. It’s an internal thing to get up and do the job over and over.”
Bears fans might be starting to wonder how much longer their team wants to keep doing it.
