Chicago Bears: The Best and Worst of Week 3 vs. Green Bay Packers

Week 3 featured an ugly, sloppy collection of miscues and mistakes that cost the Chicago Bears dearly in their 27-17 loss to the Green Bay Packers.

For what it’s worth, this felt like the worst 10-point defeat in history. The scoreboard did not reflect how one-sided the game felt.

Despite the deflating loss, there were some high points in the contest for the Bears both on offense and defense.

The weight of defeat certainly feels as if it outweighs the positive plays, but there are some nice things to take away from Sunday’s game.

Here are the best and the worst things we learned about the Chicago Bears in Week 3:

The Good...

This slide will certainly be shorter than the slide on the negatives.

The purpose of this presentation is not to dawn on strictly what went wrong.

Things that looked impressive for the Bears? The defense did at times, especially early in the third quarter. Chicago was able to force 3rd-and-long for the Packers that led to three-and-outs and punts. Chicago also had a few take-aways against the Green Bay offense.

Last season when Green Bay came to Soldier Field, the Packers had almost 20 penalties with the offensive line being especially guilty. Some of that was seen again Sunday. The Packers offensive line played sloppy at times but was good enough to open holes and win the battle of the trenches.

Offensively for the Bears, Cutler was hit and miss but showed some good moments. His mobility in the pocket appeared to increase, and he didn’t force as many throws when coverage was tight. He did make inaccurate throws, but that’s for another slide.

Other than those few moments, not much else went right for the Bears. The brilliant call by special teams coordinator Dave Toub went for naught though because of a holding penalty on Corey Graham.

Amazingly enough, Chicago was in it right until the very end. If a few more breaks went their way, who knows what could have been?

And the Bad.

As realistically and unbiased as possible, let’s break down what went wrong Sunday.

The most obvious problem the Bears had was defensive matchups with all the weapons the Packers featured. More specifically, no one was able to cover tight end Jermichael Finley.

After the game, Finley commented in the locker room that Green Bay picked on the safety combination of Brandon Meriweather and Craig Steltz who were both replacements. As well as targeting the safeties, Finley mentioned the best place to attack a Cover 2 defense is in the seams. Just ask Saints QB Drew Brees, and he would say the same thing from Week 2.

Stopping the run was only a problem when Ryan Grant had the ball. Grant ran 17 times for 92 yards. When James Starks relieved Grant in the Packers backfield, he clearly had different sights downfield. Starks ran 11 times for just five yards.

While the defense struggled to contain Green Bay, the offense was fighting an uphill battle of their own. Chicago had no offensive rhythm until late in the second and fourth quarters. The offensive line struggled to get a run block and keep Cutler from having to make poor throws.

Cutler’s decision making was better, but the execution on the two interceptions was lackadaisical. Give him credit for not throwing into tight coverage, but point a finger at him for overthrowing open receivers.

Yellow handkerchiefs also proved to be devastating. The Bears were flagged 10 times for 70 yards. That’s basically two drives worth of offense taken away.

Again, the Bears managed to lose by just 10 points while playing with these issues. 

If Chicago can sweep these problems under the rug and tighten up the execution for Week 4, the Bears have a great shot to even their record at 2-2 heading into Detroit for Monday Night Football next week.

Brett Lyons is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained firsthand or from official interview materials.

Follow Brett Lyons on Twitter @BrettLyons670.