What an absolutely wild ride that game was.
Caleb Williams and the Chicago Bears came out on fire for Sunday Night Football. It looked like this would wind up being a total route of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but then the game flipped on its head.
Between penalties and turnovers, mixed in with some questionable play calls, the Bears and Bucs put on quite the unorthodox display of prime time football.
We knew it wasn't going to be easy with the Bears taking on one of the nastiest defenses in the league. Chicago was down a key component on offense, again, as their physical presence in Kyle Monangai was out.
It was a rollercoaster.
And it ended off the leg of Cairo Santos as the Bears go to 7-2 on the season.
Ben Johnson gave Bears fans plenty of reason to be upset with his abandoning the run
The Bears' offense started out hot. in this one. Caleb Williams looked like the best quarterback on the planet for the team's first two drives.
Then, things started to unravel.
But, as things started to unravel, Ben Johnson continued to call pass play after pass play. He completely abandoned the run game when he had absolutely zero reason to do so.
It was maddening. It was frustrating. It was completely unlike Johnson who, no matter what, this season, has continued to stick with the run game.
Even this past week, during some of his time with the media, he talked about the run game and coming out running it well both in the first and second half.
But, as Caleb Williams started to spiral out of control, Johnson didn't do him any favors by forgetting to run the football.
Caleb Williams is making every effort to get Rome Odunze out of his head
In the first quarter, we saw more of the same issues from Rome Odunze as he dropped a touchdown pass. But, just two plays later, Williams went right back to Odunze, who ran a pristine route, and he caught the touchdown.
That was nice to see. The faith in his guys. Caleb doesn't waver.
Not too much later, though, Williams tried hitting a wide-open Odunze on what would've been an easy touchdown catch and run, but Odunze dropped it.
We continue to see Williams go back to his guy, although fans are really wrecking their brains trying to figure out what has happened, mentally, for Odunze.
Caleb Williams is still human and capable of playing ugly football
We saw ridiculously-good Caleb, but we also saw the odd return of Caleb Williams playing hero ball, for some reason. And it came early on in this game, in the second quarter.
Williams wound up throwing an interception on back-to-back downs. After he was picked off, by Tykee Smith at the goal line, the Bears stopped Tampa Bay on fourth down and got the ball right back.
On the first play of that next drive, it appeared as though Williams tried throwing it away, off his back foot, but didn't quite throw it far enough and it was picked off by Zyon McCollum.
Then, just before halftime, the Bears get the ball back off a Cam Lewis interception ... and Williams throws a pick on the very next play. It was off his back foot and, again, looked like he was playing hero ball.
In the second half, Williams had a pass tipped and intercepted which was number four on the night.
It was a frustrating game that started so well for no. 18.
Bears appear done with the Roschon Johnson experiment
After being elevated from the practice squad, Salvon Ahmed got some run in this game, and it came early.
Roschon Johnson, however, remained on the bench.
Ben Johnson's run-pass ratio was quite lopsided for much of this game, but none of it included Johnson as he ended the game with zero snaps on offense.
Devin Bush is hitting his stride
All night long, we saw linebacker Devin Bush consistently make plays. Early on this season, Bush had plenty of moments where he struggled. He was a frustrating player to watch.
But, he has quietly started to string together games where he is standing out. Big hits, run stops and plays where he simply announces his presence in one way or another, Bush did a little bit of everything.
Bush ended the game with nine tackles (three solo), two passes broken up and a tackle for loss.
Austin Booker keeps ascending higher each week
Another week, another game where we are singing Austin Booker's praises. Booker keeps getting better. There isn't another way to say it. He's played incredible football and made some phenomenal plays, in big moments, against the Bucs.
On a night where the offense wasn't quite what we were used to seeing, Booker and the defensive line showed up. He came up with his fifth sack on the season, good for a new career-high.
I will say, to be fair, Booker had a bad facemask penalty late on a Bucs fourth-quarter drive. But, all in all, he had himself a night.
When the final whistle blew, Booker finished with four tackles (three solo), two quarterback hits, a sack and a tackle for loss.
The Bears definitely have a fumbling problem
Much of this game was just plain nasty to watch. Late in the game, it almost got even nastier for the Bears as D'Andre Swift appeared to fumble the ball on a fourth quarter drive, Chicago up by eight.
The play was reviewed and Swift was fortunately ruled down, but it is yet another reminder that the Bears have been careless with the football this season. Last year, they only lost four total fumbles.
Had that Swift fumble been ruled an actual fumble, it would have been the Bears' eighth lost fumble of the season.
That's twice as many as they had a year ago, with half the season left.
But, wait, there's more.
With under four minutes to go, Luther Burden fumbled the ball which resulted in the Buccaneers taking over in the red zone.
Something is going on with ball security, and it needs to be fixed.
The 2026 Chicago Bears won their first (and hopefully only) ugly football game
For all the talk about blowing out opponents, all of the talk about the Bears looking like the best team in football, all of the talk about the Super Bowl this past week after taking down the Seattle Seahawks in dominant fashion...
That was flat-out ugly football.
The Bears lost the turnover battle, coughing it up five times in total.
It wasn't pretty. But it was a win.
Good teams know how to win in a variety of ways. But, let's not do that again.
Hopefully, the Bears can take a lot from the film in this one and execute plenty of studying over the coming bye week to make sure this doesn't happen again.
It's a win, yes. But it certainly didn't feel good.
Add us as a preferred source on Google