Johnson on penalty issues, injury updates and redzone issues

Ariana Pensy · Correspondent · 3 hours ago

BALTIMORE - The Chicago Bears went into Baltimore hoping to get their fifth straight win of the season.

However, that is not how things went as the Bears suffered their first loss since week two and their second double-digit loss of the year.

“Give Baltimore a lot of credit. They came out and they played a physical brand of football just like you would expect. They were hungry. They were determined and truth be told, I expected a little bit more out of our squad to counter that on up. So, we fell short,” head coach Ben Johnson said. “It’s our first game in a while … that we didn’t have a takeaway and so, when that happens, you really got to play a clean game and we didn’t. We’re in double digits in penalties once again. We’re not scoring in the red zone. We couldn’t quite get off the field as often as we’d like on defense. So, they had some good drives. I think time of possession-wise, they did a nice job controlling the game and (we) fell short.”

Turnovers have been critical to Chicago's success. In games with 1 or 0 turnovers, they are winless. However, when the Bears have gotten at least three turnovers, they are undefeated. The defense also allowed 30 points, their most since week two of this season.

What may have been more disturbing to watch was Chicago’s offense. On some drives, they could not get going. On other drives, they got going but couldn't get into the end zone. Chicago scored on their first two drives of the game, but only managed to get a field goal out of both possessions despite getting inside of Baltimore’s 25-yard line.

Penalties also continued to hurt the Bears as this 30-16 loss to the Ravens marked the third game of the year in which Chicago had at least 10 penalties.

“I think you see flashes of some explosive plays and some really good things happening. But, the penalties to me is what stands out first and foremost. We still have some of the pre-snap issues,” Johnson said. “There’s occasional not getting lined up quite right. There’s occasional not getting the motion quite right. So, that stuff does (add) up and it hurt us. We get away with it occasionally, but it’s just not the way you win in this league and so, I (really) put it on the leaders there in that locker room to get this ship going the right direction in that regard. Us coaches, we’ve been pounding that drum now for a while and we haven’t gotten the results we wanted. So, it’s on the leaders here on this team to get us right.”

One of those leaders is quarterback Caleb Williams. However, he may have had his worst game of the season despite having his second-most passing yards in a game this year. Williams had multiple off-target throws and was called for intentional grounding twice, the first of those coming just before the end of the first half.

Chicago ultimately was not able to score on the drive as kicker Cairo Santos was just short on the 58-yard field goal attempt.

“I thought we had a chance there for points before half. We had a good opportunity to do that and the intentional grounding certainly didn’t help and so, now we’re in a position third and long with no timeouts where we know if it’s a clock running and we’re short of the line to gain that we’ll need to get our hurricane unit out there, our field goal team out there real quick,” Johnson said. “So, I thought the execution of all that was nice. But that’s a really long field goal, and so it’s a low percentage deal, something that we would like to avoid. So, that intentional grounding certainly hurt us.”

Injuries also plague Chicago.

They entered this game without their top three cornerbacks - Jaylon Johnson, Kyler Gordon, and Tyrique Stevenson. Johnson is currently on injured reserve (IR) and Gordon has been placed on IR.

Johnson said Gordon’s injury is not expected to be season-ending.

“We’re hoping it’s going to be of a short-term variety,” Johnson said. “So, we should be able to get him back. But, it’s another soft tissue injury that we’re dealing with.”

During the Ravens game, Bears defensive end Dominique Robinson (ankle), defensive tackle Shemar Turner (ankle), and wide receiver Luther Burden III (concussion) also suffered injuries, putting their availability into question for Chicago’s next game of the season against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sun. Nov. 2 (Noon / CBS).