The Bears have a history of telling you that your eyes are lying to you, that what you just saw wasn’t what really happened. Not too long ago, former coach Matt Nagy promised that years of offensive floundering were merely the learning curve on the path to a breakout season that never arrived.
So there’s some warranted skepticism when offensive coordinator Luke Getsy assures everyone that everything’s fine. With the Bears, it rarely is.
That’s unfair to Getsy, who walked into Halas Hall only 18 months ago. But, especially as a longtime Packers assistant, he surely knew the environment he was walking into. It’s hard to ask Bears fans for trust when they’re still smoldering from years of getting burned.
Getsy is a realist, so he wouldn’t deny that this has been a rough week of practice for quarterback Justin Fields and the offense. Or that Wednesday was the worst they’ve looked. He would reject, however, the notion that it signals anything about the upcoming season, which is more than five weeks away.
“We don’t play touch football, so I’m OK,” Getsy said, referring to restrictions on contact even in a fully padded practice. “I’m not going to overreact.
“That wasn’t real football. We’re a physical football team. We run through tackles and all that stuff. I’m not going to get too worked up about that.”
Getsy urged patience and perspective while going through the offense’s snags and unenthusiastic reaction — “We came out a little flat,’’ Fields said — to getting worked over by the defense again.
But it’s particularly hard to stay patient when the Bears spent the offseason talking about the personnel problems they had solved. The offensive line was rebuilt, a new No. 1 wide receiver had come aboard in DJ Moore and the recommitment to Fields showed they believed he was better than No. 1 pick Bryce Young.
There’s a lot to prove. And, so far, little proof.
If Jalen Hurts’ or Justin Herbert’s offense had a week like this, it would be easily brushed aside, but those quarterbacks already have made convincing cases.
Getsy, Fields and the Bears are in a much different position after an uneven season in which they were the top rushing team and the worst passing team. Three-and-outs in 11-on-11 work look like a continuation, not an aberration.
Still, Getsy was unconcerned as he said without pause that the Bears are “off to a good start” despite making mistakes on “pretty much every play.” Those two statements, coming within seconds of each other, are difficult to reconcile.
“When I say we’re off to a good start, I just think that they’re getting better every single day,” he said. “The mistake isn’t the same mistake twice. . . . These are all things we need to experience and learn from, and sometimes you’ve got to fail at something first before you can get really good at it.”
Hopefully for the Bears, they’ve completed the failing part.
Getsy and Fields referred to the large load of plays the Bears are installing as one of the challenges in running the offense smoothly. When they get into game weeks, the call sheet will be reduced significantly as they tailor it to a specific opponent.
There’s some validity to that, but that can’t persist much longer. While the Bears do have new players in key roles acclimating to Getsy’s scheme, there’s a decent amount of carryover from last season. Fields is past the transition phase, wide receiver Chase Claypool should be by now and several others were in the lineup last season.
“Everybody’s making mistakes at this time of the season,” Getsy said. “Hopefully when we talk in two weeks, I can say there’s one [per] period instead of one [per] play.”
It’s going to be a long two weeks if things don’t start turning in that direction soon.
