Sturm: Morning After Week 3 – Worst-Case Scenario

dpf1123

DCC 4Life
Joined
Apr 8, 2013
Messages
2,714
Morning After Week 3 – Worst-Case Scenario
Cowboys defense allow the Bears a dream day with small amounts of resistance.
Bob Sturm
Sep 22, 2025




Going into Sunday, the Chicago Bears had very little confidence in their rebuild.

Yes, they had their guy, but their first two games taught them that this could take longer than they hoped. The Vikings and the Lions both left them feeling like the same old Bears. The new dawn might happen under Ben Johnson, but it doesn’t appear it will happen in 2025. He might need to get a bulldozer and the renovations may not be quick and painless.

They understand. They have watched enough Chicago Bears football to know that this is a pretty normal timeline. Wait until next year…. or the one after that.
But, behold, here come the Dallas Cowboys. The solution to anyone’s confidence issues. They don’t seem capable of slowing down any offense – no matter how low on confidence they might be. If Russell Wilson or Caleb Williams need a week where they can feel like they can be successful, make sure Dallas is next on the schedule and everything seems able to work out just fine.

The Giants have not scored 10 points in either of their other two games this year, but against Dallas they scored an inefficient 37 which probably should have been 50.
The Bears, who were coming off a 31-point loss just seven days ago in Detroit, were able to put up 31 of their own in just five drives to where they had secured a game by the final minute of the third quarter – against a team that was somehow favored.

The honeymoon for the Brian Schottenheimer era is quickly getting away from us – just one week after we spent a little time feeling good about an ugly win and grinding out a result when there is so much “to clean up,” as coach-speak goes. But, let’s also be quick to identify the obvious here: this Cowboys team appears to have more problems than it has solutions and with 14 games to go, the idea that there is a ton of optimism is probably not being fully honest with the building evidence to the contrary.

If we were to talk about moments from Sunday that defined what we are dealing with, I think there are probably four that come quickly to mind and all of them happened in the first 11 minutes of the game. In chronological order:
  1. Cowboys call the same concept that they tried in Philadelphia that sprung Miles Sanders for a huge run with that pull-lead play to the wide left, but this time it is the second snap of the game for the offense and Javonte Williams is off to the races down that same left sideline. He will rumble 22 yards and set the Cowboys up with a 1st down down inside the Bears 30 before Dak even has to throw a pass and a chance to score the first points of the game. There is nothing remotely negative or ominous about this play from the Cowboys perspective until we see that at the end of the play, Williams allows the Bears cornerback Tyrique Stevenson – who was previously best known for taunting Washington fans while giving up a hail mary in 2024 to Jayden Daniels – to absolutely rip the ball right out of Javonte’s hands. It was a moment that would make Peanut Tillman proud but from a Cowboys standpoint, they just made a great play into a huge negative. It signaled the start of a series of unfortunate events.
  2. The Bears second drive featured not one, but two 30-yard passes. This on the week right after the goal of the entire defense was to stop allowing 30-yard passes to wide open receivers behind your defense. The big one here, of course, will be the 3rd and 8 with 10:40 to go in the first quarter. This will be the first time the Cowboys tried man coverage in this game, but they have a 5-man blitz with man behind it. That will require Trevon Diggs to stick on Caleb’s favorite target, young Rome Odunze who just had his career afternoon a week ago (as we covered on Friday’s preview piece). Well, bad thing about man coverage is that if your corner is trying to jam a receiver who is at least 20 pounds heavier, he better not miss and lose his balance. Because not only is he bigger, but he is just as fast and given the state of Diggs knee, perhaps even faster these days. Well, as you know, Diggs did miss and he did slip so now with the blitz not getting anywhere close to Caleb, he sees Odunze put up his arm (the flag on the mailbox is up signifying he has a touchdown) and Williams takes full advantage for a practice-rep level free touchdown on 3rd and long. Oof.
  3. With 8:39 left in the first quarter, Dallas has the ball for the second time, down 7-0. They quickly gain a 1st down and things are in order on the pregame script where they show their game-planning skills and grow into the game. CeeDee Lamb is lined up as your lone running back and before we 2nd guess his high-ankle sprain too badly, I would like to concede that there have been situations where they line CeeDee up as a RB in every season he has been in the NFL since 2020. In total, there have been at least 50 occasions where they use him back there, sometimes to decoy, but other times to run the ball like a RB and it often works pretty well. So, I do understand people who are really frustrated by Lamb getting hurt on a running play since that really isn’t what he is paid $136 million to do, but I don’t think that we can cherry-pick how they “get him the ball” only when he gets hurt. But, yes, they will probably not have Lamb for a month now because his ankle bent a direction that it is definitely not supposed to bend when he was rolled up on by linebacker Noah Sewell. It could have happened on a quick pass play to the flat, but it didn’t. It happened when they were playing him out of his normal position and that certainly carries with it a bad look. And now, the focal point of your offense has been removed and you are scrambling badly just as the game begins. You do get a field goal out of the drive, but now it is 7-3 with the ball going back to Chicago.
  4. 4:21 left in the first Quarter. Chicago has the ball at their own 35-yard line to begin their third drive. They will come out in 12 personnel with extremely tight splits because the number one objective of the Ben Johnson offense in Detroit is to show you a run formation over and over until you forget that you are being set up in a trap for a shot over the top. There is a genius in this wonderful tactic in football where you set traps at perfect times to get a team to cut their own throats. But, again, on the first play of a drive with bigger personnel, the defense believes that you are planning a run up the gut in this spot. Heck, DJ Moore and Odunze are not even on the field to help set the trap even better. It is a flea flicker where the toss back to Caleb Williams is horrible. Yet, because everyone on the Dallas defense bit so badly, he had all the time in the world to decide where to throw the ball. There is a moment where you can stop the play and see poor Malik Hooker is the only person back with two Bears receivers running wide open right at him. Which ever place he steps, Caleb simply lofts a ball in the general direction of the other. He chooses rookie Luther Burden who had barely seen a ball in his first two weeks, but we college fans knew what he was going to do next. He was going to make a nice and casual over-the shoulder grab and prance into the end-zone, again as if it was a Wednesday practice rep. It is 14-3 and the Bears already have three deep pass plays that have hit for 3 completions 131 yards and 2 touchdowns.
I know football philosopher Mike Tyson once suggested that “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth,” but I assume that would apply when you get punched four successive times by a team that didn’t even know they were allowed to punch opponents.

Dallas was being pummeled by the Chicago Bears in a way that resembled the way they were destroyed by an awful New Orleans Saints side in early 2024. Everything was going wrong at the exact same moment and Dallas just looked like they already knew that they were dead.

To their credit, Dallas was able to settle themselves and grow back into the game. Dak Prescott has seen enough of these moments of nonsense to react positively and steady the ship. Prescott found George Pickens a few different times early in the 2nd and they were able to climb back to even at 14-14, so the first quarter did not completely doom them. The running game was working and Pickens does allow for some hope if Lamb is lost for a little while.

But, that can only work if the defense can do anything. And they clearly can’t.

If I may pause here and ask how the Cowboys knew Ben Johnson was going to be the next hot head coach available and did not even interview him? They saw his work in Detroit and instead wanted to hire someone in-house and comfortable who would not demand any sort of authority for personnel nor a top of the market coaching contract.

The Jones family doesn’t enjoy giving away power and they also don’t enjoy paying coaches at the top of the market. Therefore, Ben Johnson was hired by the notoriously cheap McCaskey family that runs the Bears.

Additionally, when it was time to hire a defensive mind to pair with their new in-house head coach, they did not scan the football universe. Instead, they grabbed the fired Bears coach and immediately handed him their defense because he was a comfortable and familiar name who everyone would enjoy welcoming to back into their arms where he once was. So, Matt Eberflus is here.

Well, we can only imagine what Ben Johnson was thinking all week as he looked at the film of Eberflus’ squad giving the Giants the entire field to work with. Now, let’s not blame the defensive coordinator, because he was hired under the premise of having Micah Parsons at his disposal. Only after training camp ended was he informed that he would be trying to coach without a pass rusher this season, nor really any defensive players who would be in anyone’s top defenders in the league. If this is a player’s league, Eberflus will be asked to scheme up a team that doesn’t seem to have anything too special on that side of the ball. But, boy, they will be determined to stop the run! Of course, in a passing league, that might not make much sense, but imagine the cap room!

They have run the ball pretty well and they have stopped the run through three games.

And yet, they also seem miles from contending because the football world doesn’t value that a whole lot these days.

And from the time it was 14-14 to the time the game was over with nine seconds to go in the third quarter, Dallas gave up three drives to the Bears that scored 17 points and amassed 201 yards on 34 plays in over 16 minutes of domination. There were a couple big plays in that stretch, but six third-down conversions and Caleb Williams looking like he was in complete control. Of course, it helps when there are too many guys just uncovered. Whether it is D’Andre Swift completely left by himself on a screen or Cole Kmet wide open standing by the goal-post before halftime.

Yes, you want a fundamentally sound defense that knows where it is supposed to be and playing hard. But, you also want a defensive structure that has a chance to win. When they made the trade, they took a defense that was poor and made it way worse. Then the injuries start and here we are again. No corners, no pass rush, no clue. Firing your defensive coordinator would simply give someone else the task of designing a defense that no design can possibly save.

There are days where I am labeled as someone who is too optimistic, but this is not one of those days. I see an offense that must score on every possession to try to save a defense that cannot do anything very well. Now, they realize this and are taking risks to try to cover the margins (like blitzing and playing man behind it), but the risks are making them even worse.

We are three weeks in and they have made the Giants and Bears offenses look like world beaters and remember, this is the easy part of the schedule.
I hate to say it, but this season is already in critical condition as more players limp off. I know they will have an emotional response next week, but to think they are squandering the soft part of the schedule is very disconcerting.

What is even worse is that the body language from all involved seems to indicate that they aren’t hiding any ideas, either. This might be their best plan. And Caleb Williams just looked like a Heisman winner for about the first time in his career.

Thanks to the 2025 Dallas Cowboys.
 
Top Bottom