Seahawks keep things low key, beat Bears 6-3
By Jake Parr, edited by Charles Hamaker
Chicago, IL - As much as the holidays are festive and fun, they’re also exhausting. Between travel, long hours cooking, and an early sunset, the winter holidays tend to induce a special kind of sleepiness. In celebration of the holidays, then, our Seattle Seahawks and the Chicago Bears played a very sleepy, relaxed game. If football is meant to be a replacement for war, tonight’s war was World War One, as the Hawks and Bears fought in the trenches over a handful of yards at a time, with neither team having enough of an advantage over the other to make much progress. Neither team scored a touchdown, and all but two drives ended with either a punt or a field goal. But a win is a win, and tonight’s keeps Seattle’s playoff hopes alive, just barely.
The Seattle Seahawks defense was strong all night long in a bizarre game against the Chicago Bears at Soldier Field, holding them to just three points on the night in a critical game for the Seahawks’ postseason hopes. (Photos from the Seattle Seahawks website)
A Grizzly Performance
Fans of Chicago sports have suffered a lot this year, and the Bears have not helped matters. Since starting the 2024 season 4-2, the Bears have not won a football game as they’ve dealt with a myriad of differing issues. Chicago entered tonight’s game with a record of 4-11 and very much at the bottom of an otherwise stacked NFC North. Rookie quarterback Caleb Williams has struggled at the NFL level, and having one of the worst offensive lines in the league hasn’t helped matters as the top selection in this past years draft has failed to live up to lofty expectations. The Bears have allowed 60 sacks this year, second only to the Cleveland Browns with 63. Tonight’s game didn’t help matters, with the Seahawks defense adding seven more sacks to that total, pushing Williams and the Bears back 46 cumulative yards on sacks alone. Who else but Seattle defensive lineman Leonard Williams led the way with two, but lots of Seahawks got in on the action. Devon Witherspoon, Uchenna Nwosu, Jarran Reed, Rayshawn Jenkins, and Derrick Hall all brought the rookie QB down behind the line of scrimmage as the Seattle defense took advantage of a porous line and rookie quarterback.
The Seahawks’ defensive unit was dominant as a whole. They put together a convincing argument against the concept of normative determinism, as Bears running back D’Andre Swift was completely unable to sprint through the Seahawks defensive line. Swift was held to just 53 total yards and 4.4 per carry. Chicago’s best receiver, DJ Moore, couldn’t do much better, picking up a paltry 54 yards through the air. With these performances by their best players, the Bears only picked up 179 yards from scrimmage. Of their ten drives, three of them end in three-and-outs, and six of them lasted for less than three minutes of game time.
Clock management has been an issue for the Bears all season, and in fact is often cited as a reason that head coach Matt Eberflus was fired several weeks ago. The Bears struggled with it again this week in their last drive of the game. Down just three points, with five minutes on the clock and three timeouts in their pocket, Chicago was in full control of their destiny. Instead they used nearly 25 seconds per play, they did not work the sideline, and they only called two timeouts. Most egregiously, after a 2nd and two screen went nowhere, they waited for all 40 seconds of the play clock before snapping their 3rd down play. They gained one yard on a scramble up the middle. Chicago was down by just three points, and they played like they had the lead. In the end, they were forced to make a midfield desperation play on 4th and ten. Under pressure, Williams released the ball deep up the middle for DJ Moore, but Moore couldn’t close his hands on it. It sailed through his arms and into the waiting hands of Seattle cornerback Riq Woolen, who has had a struggle of a last few weeks in terms of his own performances. That interception sealed the win and kept Seattle’s playoff chances alive to finish off one of the uglier games in recent NFL memory.
The Seattle Seahawks special teams got plenty of work in this game, as both teams units did in this bizarre game at Soldier Field against the Chicago Bears, as Michael Dickson punted the ball away six times while Jason Myers converted two field goals that represented the only points all night for the Seahawks. (Photos from the Seattle Seahawks website)
Putting the “Foot” in Football
Not that the Seahawks had a significantly better night. In a game that featured some Seattle-ish weather, the Hawks were frozen out of the endzone, and there are a lot of reasons for that. Missing star running back Kenneth Walker III yet again did not help the offense, as he was placed on season-ending injured reserve hours before this game with a high ankle sprain. As much as Zach Charbonnet has been a consistent producer this season, he can struggle at times in the top rusher role. Tonight he picked up 57 yards on 15 carries. Kenny McIntosh supported him in the backfield and carved out 46 yards for himself on seven carries.
For the passing game, the raw numbers are good (160 yards, 7.0 on average, 92.7 passer rating) but the Hawks just couldn’t nest in the end zone. But the difference between the two teams on the field tonight was that Seattle was able to get into field goal range on one more drive than the Bears. Of course, with Jason Myers as the placekicker, field goal range is a lot longer for the Seahawks as it is for most teams. Myers’ first kick was a 27-yard chip shot but his second, ultimately game-winning kick, was a 50-yard snipe that scientifically bisected the uprights. Myers is now 23 for 27 on field goal tries this year, setting a career-high with his eighth field goal from 50 yards this season and also extended his Seahawks franchise record, and the Seahawks can thank his right foot for 103 points this season.
Of the 18 drives in today’s game that didn’t end due to the clock running out, all but two of them ended with some kind of kick, either field goal or punt. Those two were Riq Woolen’s game-sealing interception mentioned above, but the other was less fun. On tight end Pharoah Brown’s only reception tonight, he caught the ball barely behind the line of scrimmage, and muscled his way about four yards past it. As he was being tackled, Bears cornerback (And University of Washington alumni) Kyler Gordon punched the ball out of his arms and recovered it. On the field, a referee blew his whistle, and the Seahawks stopped playing. Gordon then got up and ran 62 yards for what was at first ruled a touchdown. That was quickly overturned however, when replay showed that Gordon was down by contact when he scooped the ball. That takeaway was perhaps the closest the Bears ever came to winning the game. Instead, the Bears only managed a six play drive that, due to a 14 yard sack by pass rusher Uchenna Nwosu, only gained a single yard from where Gordon’s knee hit the ground.
What’s Next?
With tonight’s win, the Seahawks still have a chance to beat the Los Angeles Rams which would result in them winning the NFC West title. For that to happen, they need the Rams to lose their upcoming game against the Arizona Cardinals on Saturday, December 28th. The Cardinals have been eliminated from playoff contention, but hopefully will be excited to play spoiler as they head out on the road to play this game on a Saturday at SoFi stadium. Should the Rams win, the tiebreaker will then be determined by “strength of victory.” This means that for week 18, in addition to rooting for the Seahawks, Seattle fans will want any three of the Packers, Jets, Lions, Falcons, Broncos, and Dolphins to win their games.
But for that to matter, the Seahawks will have to take care of business against the Los Angeles Rams in SoFi stadium on either January 4th or 5th. The exact date and time of the game has yet to be determined as of writing, as the NFL has considered this to be a “flex game” no doubt due to the ramifications it’s final result may have. The Rams are a tough team, as proven by the fact that they beat the Seahawks at home back in November, as Matthew Stafford continues to lead a stingy team coach by Sean McVay. That game was close, however, necessitating overtime to resolve. And the Hawks have been dominant on the road this year, not losing an away game since being blown up in Detroit all the way back in September. The fate of Mike MacDonald’s first year as an NFL head coach will come down to the final game of the regular season. And in a year that has had no shortage of drama, how could we expect anything less? This Seattle Seahawks franchise can truly never be “normal.”
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Check out our previous Seattle Seahawks articles here.
Check out our previous articles written by Jake Parr here, and his Lookout Landing articles here.
Cover photo and photos in this article from the Seattle Seahawks website.
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