A lot of Bears fans have given up on offensive coordinator Luke Getsy — less than a year after many of those same fans were worried about losing him.
That’s how quickly things can change with a frustrated fan base that is on edge after a 12-year run of four general managers, five head coaches, eight offensive coordinators and three “franchise” quarterbacks that has produced one playoff team with a winning record — and one disappointing offense after another.
But frustration seemed like the least of Getsy’s concerns when he was asked about the toll of three consecutive losses marked by an offense that shows little to no quantifiable evidence of progress.
The Bears are 27th in points scored, 29th in total yards, 31st in passing yards, 30th in sacks allowed, tied for 27th in giveaways and 25th in third-down conversion percentage. And quarterback Justin Fields is 30th in passer rating (67.7) through three games after Sunday’s 41-10 loss to the Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium.
Pretty bleak, right?
“I think we’re in the process of building something special,” Getsy said. “And I think that we’re in the phase of it’s Week 4 and we’re going on to find a way to attack Denver [Sunday at Soldier Field] in a completely different way than we did Kansas City.”
Frustration? Getsy is too busy formulating the next game plan for that.
“That’s a week-to-week challenge that you have,” he said. “There’s different schemes. Different mentalities of coordinators that you’re playing against. Like coach Flus [Matt Eberflus] always says, you get 24 hours to enjoy or be sad about whatever the heck happened and you move on. That’s part of our business. It’s a 17-week process. It is not a three-week process.”
The problem with that argument, of course, is that we’re actually 20 game weeks into a developmental process that began in Week 1 last season. The Bears don’t get to re-start the clock just because DJ Moore and Darnell Wright just showed up in the spring. Or that the offensive line is still a patchwork. Everybody has problems.
But just three weeks into the season, we’re already at the stage where the Bears are grasping for whatever they can to provide hope that they “can get this thing going in the right direction” as Eberflus put it. Eberflus referred to the 2018 Colts team that started 1-5 and finished 10-6 to make the playoffs — perhaps forgetting that the Colts had Andrew Luck at quarterback to fuel that resurgence. Fields pointed to last year’s Lions, who started 1-6 “and almost made the playoffs.”
Getsy was in a similar tough spot Thursday when it came to Fields and his apparent regression. Fields hasn’t thrown for more than 216 yards in a game this season. He hasn’t thrown more than one touchdown pass. His completion percentage has dropped from 64.9 to 55.2 to 50 in three games.
In Week 4, Getsy is not in position to fold a weak hand. He played it as best he could. “[Fields is] doing a really nice job in the midst of a lot of [crap] right now … that he’s manning up and taking a leadership role for these guys,” Getsy said.
So where has he improved?
“You talk about a guy who during the week in the preparation getting everybody on board or on the same page and I think that showed up again [last] week, where it wasn’t an issue at all,” Getsy said.
“He made sure that everybody was on the same page protection-wise, when you had a new line like we had again … that was a really good example of him being in control of all that stuff.”
Being on the same page netted the Bears 87 yards on 25 plays (3.5 yards per play) as they fell behind 41-0 against the Chiefs. The Bears’ offense might get there yet, but at this point it looks like it’ll take longer than 17 weeks.
