Bears def. Commanders on TNF: Recap & analysis (2024)

Chicago Bears receiver DJ Moore nearly logged a career high in receiving yards in the first half of Thursday night’s game. In the second half, he shattered that mark as he helped the Bears seal a 40-20 win against the Washington Commanders. Here’s what you need to know:

• Moore had four catches for 126 yards and a touchdown in the first quarter, finishing the game with 230 yards and three TDs. That total surpassed his previous career high set in 2018.
• Bears quarterback Justin Fields passed for 282 yards and four touchdowns while rushing for 57 yards.
• The Commanders and quarterback Sam Howell bounced back from a first half that saw them outgained 307 to 84 yards to finish with 388 total yards of offense.

Read more here.

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Get Hyped, the scoreboard ribbon at FedExField pleaded to the (sellout!) crowd. Make Noise, it begged.

To quote the well-known philosopher Richard James “Ricky” Watters, “For who? For what?”

We’re back to the future with this defense. This underachieving, ineffective, overrated defense.

It’s one thing to give up points and yards in Philly, against one of the league’s best offenses. You could even explain away getting smoked at home by the Buffalo Bills. The Bills have explosive receivers, and Josh Allen is really good.

The Chicago Bears are not good. Not. Good.

Read more here.

A few playing time and statistical observations the morning after the Bears’ first win of the season…

• The gameday roster was used to the fullest. Only backup quarterback Tyson Bagent didn’t see the field, and 17 players played at least 20 percent of snaps on defense.
• Thursday night was another busy one for the tight ends. The Bears were in “12 personnel” for a season-high 42.2 percent of snaps, the same number they were in three-wide “11 personnel”, which was a season-low. Marcedes Lewis (22 snaps) and Robert Tonyan (21) got plenty of run, while Cole Kmet paced the group with 53 snaps.
• Equanimeous St. Brown appeared to injure his hamstring in the second half, and rookie Tyler Scott got those reps, finishing with 15 snaps.
• Injuries and a left guard rotation impacted the O-line, but Teven Jenkins finished with 37 snaps in his season debut.
• Gervon Dexter played a season-high 47 percent of snaps. He had two QB hits and a pass defensed.
• Matt Eberflus dialed up a blitz on 28.3 percent of dropbacks, per TruMedia, a season high, and the Bears came through with 23 pressures, 11 QB hits and five sacks, all season-best numbers.

Chicago Bears tight end Cole Kmet has been shouldering the losing streak. Game after game, he stands in front of his locker and answers questions after another loss.

Late Thursday night, after the Bears ended a 14-game losing streak with a 40-20 win over the Washington Commanders, Kmet expressed relief as much as excitement.

“It’s been hard the past, has it been a full year? I don’t know. It’s been hard,” he said. “We had to grind through a lot of stuff here. But credit to the guys. We stayed persistent.”

Wide receiver DJ Moore dominated with 230 receiving yards and three touchdown catches, but nothing is easy for this Bears team.

It took everyone.

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Magic Johnson seemed to understand the Washington Commanders’ mission against the winless Chicago Bears.

Not simply triumph in Thursday’s nationally streamed game, but at minimum, yes, that and enter the mini-bye with a winning record and positive vibes. More specifically, establish competitive dominance from the start against arguably the NFL’s worst team. Before a sellout home crowd, let Chicago know it would be a long night.

This is what squads that see themselves as playoff contenders accomplish. This was the mission. Instead, this mission proved impossible. Not by a little, but by a lot against a team that had lost 14 consecutive games dating to last season.

Johnson, the legendary NBA champion and one of Washington’s new owners, effectively summed up the failure following the 40-20 flameout.

“Tonight the Commanders played with no intensity or fire,” Johnson posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “We didn’t compete in the first half and got down 27-3 heading into halftime. It was too big of a hole to climb out of, and that is why we ended up losing 40-20.”

The comments in the postgame locker room were not contradictory.

“That’s as bad as it gets, honestly,” wide receiver Terry McLaurin said.

Read more here.

The DJ Moore show went national Thursday night.

It opened on the Chicago Bears’ third play from scrimmage.

It featured several great throws from quarterback Justin Fields.

It starred Moore’s speed, acceleration, route running, elusiveness, athleticism, body control, hands — everything that makes him a No. 1 wide receiver.

And it ended with Moore’s 56-yard catch-and-run curtain call for a touchdown — his final bow in the Bears’ 40-20 win against the Washington Commanders at FedEx Field on “Thursday Night Football.”

“You saw his skill and talent out there,” coach Matt Eberflus said. “Just an amazing player.”

If the Bears are back, it’s because Moore put the Bears offense on his back when it needed him the most.

Read more here.

The Commanders were chasing a big deficit for much of the night and ended up calling just six designed running plays in Thursday’s loss to the Bears (6 of 66 total plays, 9.1%).

It was the lowest designed-rush rate by any team in a single game since Week 3 of 2018 when the Vikings ran five designed rushes among their 65 plays against the Bills (7.7%).

Do you know how much Amazon is paying to show (mostly bad) NFL games on Thursday nights this season?

Around a billion dollars. For games like Bears-Commanders.

Do you know why the NFL was in the position to get a billion dollars a year from Jeff Bezos and to sign TV deals worth over $100 billion — not including the new YouTube Sunday Ticket deal — two years ago?

It’s because of guys like Dick Butkus, who never earned a million dollars in a season but built this league tackle by tackle and hit by hit.

Forget the owners and Pete Rozelle. Rough-and-tumble, snot-kicking football players like Butkus made the league the true national pastime in the 1960s and ’70s. NFL Films turned a hard-hitting Chicago kid into a national icon, a modern gladiator. Across the country, the name “Dick Butkus” meant one thing: knocking running backs out of their shoes.

Read more here.

346 days.

That’s how long it had been since the Bears’ last victory on Oct. 24, 2022, against the Patriots on Monday Night Football.

Chicago ran more second-half plays with a double-digit lead tonight (24) than it did during all games in its 14-game losing streak combined (21).

Here are my fantasy takeaways from tonight’s Bears-Commanders game.

1. DJ Moore had already moved himself into WR2 contention after posting three straight games with 13+ PPR points but this performance shows that he should be a strong WR2 in most weeks and has the potential to be a WR1 versus favorable matchups.
2. With over 62 points in the past two weeks, Justin Fields is showing that he doesn’t need strong rushing numbers to post QB1 points. That portends well for his lineup potential over the next three games when the Bears face three subpar defenses (Minnesota, Las Vegas, and the Los Angeles Chargers).
3. It’s been tougher than ever to find solid tight end production this year, which is why Cole Kmet is going to be finding his way into more starting lineups now that he has posted 42.8 PPR points over the past two games.
4. Washington’s lack of a solid ground game and shaky defense have led to the Commanders leaning on Sam Howell and he’s stepped up with three games of 19+ fantasy points. With byes and QB injuries now starting to impact lineups, Howell is going to be a spot starter on many occasions over the next couple of months.
5. Logan Thomas will also be finding his way into a lot of starting lineups after posting his second game with 10+ PPR points this season.

Join Robert Mays and Nate Tice at 11:30 p.m. ET for a live breakdown of the Bears' win on The Athletic Football Show.

Watch the live stream here.

Chicago WR DJ Moore just scored his third touchdown and now has scored 49 PPR points tonight. That is the second-highest single-game total for any player in the 2023 season, behind only De’Von Achane’s 51.3 points against Denver.

It is also the highest single-game PPR point total for a wide receiver since the 2021 season when Ja’Marr Chase scored 55.6 PPR points against the Chiefs in Week 17 of that campaign.

DJ Moore puts the game away with a 56-yard touchdown, his third of the game.

Moore now has 230 receiving yards tonight, the second most in Bears’ single-game history (Alshon Jeffery, 249 at Vikings in 2013).

Moore is the first Bears player with at least 200 receiving yards and three touchdowns in the same game since Harlon Hill in 1954 against the 49ers.

DJ Moore: 8 catches for 230 yards, second all-time for a Bear in a single game behind Alshon Jeffery's 249.

Bears 37, Commanders 20.

The most points the Bears have scored in a game since Dec. 27, 2020 (41 at Jacksonville)

Commanders kicker Joey Slye can’t connect from 46 yards out and the score remains 30-20.

Slye is now 27-32 on kicks shorter than 50 yards over the past two seasons (84.4%), the third-worst rate in the NFL among kickers with at least 30 such attempts.

Chicago’s defense has been quite bad against vertical passes this season, as the Bears had the third-highest yards allowed per target on throws traveling 11+ air yards through Week 4 at 15.4 yards.

Tonight isn’t quite to that pace for the entire game, as Sam Howell is 5 for 8 for 102 yards on vertical passes in this contest, but it is that way for the second half, as Howell is 5 for 6 for 102 yards in this half, which equates to a 17.0 YPT average.

The Bears entered the night with an NFL-low two sacks through the first four weeks and they’ve now taken down Commanders QB Sam Howell three times tonight.

The three sacks are the most by a Chicago defense in a single game since Week 6 of last season against… Washington (also three).

It was somewhat surprising that the over/under in total points for this game at BetMGM was at 44.5 points at kickoff, especially considering that these teams were among the worst in the league in points allowed.

That was likely due to the sports betting public thinking this matchup had the makings of the dreaded Thursday Night Football dud, but that hasn’t been the case as Washington has now fought back to make this a 30-20 game that has surpassed that over/under total.

Sports bettors are also expecting that the Commanders could make the final score even closer, as Chicago is only a 6.5-point favorite in live in-game betting despite having a 10-point lead.