Bill Barnwell Named the Two Games That Would Test Chicago's Offense. The First One Produced Three Points.
After the opener, ESPN's Barnwell flagged unsustainable rates and pointed at the Vikings and Eagles. Minnesota held the Bears to three, and Ben Johnson blamed the penalties.
Predictions are usually worth little because they are rarely specific enough to be wrong. Bill Barnwell's was specific. Writing at ESPN after Chicago's opener, he did not dispute that the offense had been excellent - he itemized exactly which parts of it could not continue, then named the fixture list that would find out.
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The rates he flagged were the kind that look like dominance and function like a coin landing the same way repeatedly. Going four-for-four in the red zone and ten of fourteen on third down is not a skill you hold; it is a level even very good offenses touch and fall off. His conclusion was not that Chicago was a fraud. It was that the schedule was about to ask a much harder question. What makes the prediction worth revisiting is that it was made before anyone had reason to doubt the offense. Chicago had just scored freely, the national mood was enthusiastic, and Barnwell was not writing against the grain for its own sake - he was pointing at two specific numbers and a two-game window. Predictions made at the top of a wave are the only ones worth grading later, because they cost the writer something at the time.
The degree of difficulty will increase dramatically over the next two weeks, with the Bears set to face the Vikings and Eagles at home.— Bill Barnwell, ESPN, written after the Bears' season opener
The first of those two games produced three points. Minnesota won 9-3 at Soldier Field, and the offense that had looked untouchable a week earlier did not reach the end zone. Ben Johnson, in his second season as Chicago's head coach, did not reach for the weather or the opponent's defensive reputation when accounting for it. He put it on his own side's self-inflicted damage, and the detail he supplied is the part worth keeping: seven penalties in the first half alone, producing third-and-13, third-and-12 and third-and-29. A team can scheme its way out of third-and-five. Nobody schemes their way out of third-and-29.
The test, and the first result
Flagged the unsustainable rates: four-for-four in the red zone and ten of fourteen on third down.
"The degree of difficulty will increase dramatically over the next two weeks, with the Bears set to face the Vikings and Eagles at home."
Minnesota 9, Chicago 3.
"The penalties were a major factor, more so than the weather or anything."
Seven penalties in the first half, producing third-and-13, third-and-12 and third-and-29.
The second game Barnwell named. Philadelphia is the more conventional test of the two.
What makes this more than a bad afternoon is that Barnwell's framing is still live. He named two games, and only one has been played. The Eagles arrive next, and the question the second fixture answers is different from the one the first did. Minnesota's defense is a specific problem - an aggressive pressure scheme that few other opponents replicate - so one bad night against it generalizes poorly. Philadelphia is a cleaner test of whether the opener was real, precisely because it is a more conventional one. There is also an honest complication in reading too much into the Vikings game at all: Chicago moved the ball, and lost it in the situations where points are actually scored rather than in the ones where yards are gained. That is a failure that regresses more often than it persists. The uncomfortable version is that Barnwell was right about the rates and right about the calendar, and the offense still has not been tested by an ordinary defense.
One of the two games Barnwell named has been played, and it produced three points. The other one is the one that actually settles it.
Regression Or Reality
Chicago moved the ball against Minnesota and lost it in scoring situations, which is the kind of failure that usually corrects.
Barnwell named the exact rates that could not hold before either game was played, and the first one collapsed on schedule.
The Eagles. A conventional defense asks the question Minnesota's pressure scheme did not.
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Sources: ESPN — Bill Barnwell on the Bears after Week 1, ChicagoBears.com — 3 things that stood out to Ben Johnson in the Week 2 loss