SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The Chicago Bears didn’t find a new wacky way to lose late in Sunday’s game against the San Francisco 49ers, as they had in four of their previous six games.
They faltered early and often at Levi’s Stadium, giving up 319 yards and 24 points in the first half on the way to a 38-13 loss — their seventh straight.
Interim coach Thomas Brown, making his head coaching debut 10 days after the Bears fired Matt Eberflus, said, “We got our butts kicked. There’s no other way to say it.”
The Bears defense, working under new defensive play caller Eric Washington, had a particularly rough night.
During a three-game losing skid entering Sunday, the 49ers, who have been decimated by injuries this season, didn’t score more than 17 points or total more than 277 yards in any game.
The 49ers topped those numbers in the first half against the Bears. Quarterback Brock Purdy had 258 of his 325 passing yards and two touchdowns in the half, and tight end George Kittle had 138 of his 155 receiving yards.
“It was really just explosive plays that hurt us today,” linebacker T.J. Edwards said. “It was just us not executing and not doing what we prepped for this week.”
Bears players said most of the right things during a chaotic week at Halas Hall as they tried to regroup from the sudden changes in the building, including their defensive play caller for the last three seasons being fired. They were hopeful that the new leadership would help provide a spark after some of Eberflus’ late-game decisions in multiple close losses were scrutinized.
Instead, it looked as bad as it has all season, with the Bears giving up 452 yards, tied for the second-most this season by an opponent.
The players afterward didn’t blame the change or the chaotic week, however. They put it on themselves. Edwards and safety Kevin Byard said they had a good week of practice and prep, both noting there will be things they don’t see on film that pop up in the game.
The Bears, Byard said, got their “ass whooped.”
“The coaches aren’t out there playing,” Byard said. “We’re the ones out there on the field. We’re putting the product out there. So at the end of the day, I just try to look in the mirror. I feel like I didn’t play well today. I probably would say that everybody you talk to is going to say the same thing, they didn’t play well enough today. That’s the reality: You don’t play well, you lose games, you get blown out.”
Bears cornerback Jaylon Johnson, who expressed his frustration to Eberflus in the Detroit Lions visiting locker room after the Thanksgiving loss, was short with his explanations Sunday. But he echoed Byard’s comments about the upheaval not playing into the loss.
“No,” Johnson said. “We didn’t execute.”
How surprising was that lack of execution?
“Very surprising,” he said.
The 49ers had eight plays of more than 20 yards — all but one of them in the first half — including five of 30 or more yards.
Purdy made it look easy on the 49ers’ opening touchdown drive with back-to-back passes of 23 and 33 yards to running back Isaac Guerendo and Kittle on the drive. Kittle had a 32-yard catch on their second touchdown drive, a 23-yarder on their third and a 32-yarder on their final drive of the half, which ended in a field goal.
“He had a couple of screens,” Edwards said of Kittle. “He’s an elusive guy. He does a lot for them in terms of protection and then route-running and yards after catch, he’s really good with that too. Yeah, he just kind of made things happen, and we didn’t.”
Purdy had a season-high 145.4 passer rating. Guerendo, a rookie making his first start in place of injured Christian McCaffrey and Jordan Mason, rushed for 78 yards and two touchdowns and also had two catches for 50 yards. Jauan Jennings had seven catches for 90 yards and two touchdowns.
“They just ran some good plays,” nickel Kyler Gordon said. “We’ve just got to be tuned in a little more.”
The Bears sacked Purdy just once and had one takeaway — a Jonathan Owens interception of backup quarterback Brandon Allen late in the fourth quarter with the game out of reach.
Compare that to the 49ers defense, which sacked Bears quarterback Caleb Williams seven times and turned Williams’ third-quarter fumble into a touchdown drive and a 31-6 lead.
In his first game leading the entire team and calling offensive plays, Brown said he needed to watch the tape to get a better idea of what went wrong on defense. But he said coaches need to “do a better job of putting (in) a better game plan on both sides of the ball.”
Brown said his first postgame address to his players was straightforward — declaring they got their “butts kicked” but also noting they need to step up and execute better. The Bears have four more games this season, against teams that all have at least eight wins.
“He was basically saying nobody is going to come and save us,” defensive end Montez Sweat said. “We’re grown-ass men. We just have to go into this next week and get back to work.”
