Chicago Bears lose to Buccaneers: Defensive grades

Linebackers: C-

Considering that Jonathan Anderson played significant snaps in yesterday’s game, the performance of the linebackers could’ve been a lot worse.

Then again, they didn’t need much help with messing things up before Anderson got on the field.

I would like to think that things probably would have been fine if Nick Kwiatkowski did not need to leave the game due to injury. In the little time he was in the game, he certainly did not look out of place playing in Jerrell Freeman’s stead.

But, unfortunately, the football gods do not care about what I want.

Also, can someone explain to me why our players are randomly pulling/tearing their chest muscles? Someone flag down the training staff.

OnceKwiatkowskii went out with injury, Christian Jones filled in alongside Trevathan and promptly looked like a third-string linebacker. After a strong preseason, Jones has reverted back to looking lost again.

Then, of course, you have Trevathan.

Remember that kid who kept making the team do extra sprints at practice because he kept screwing up? Yeah…that was Trevathan yesterday.

Keeping your team on the field after a third-down stop because you held someone downfield is bad enough once. Doing it twice just makes everyone question if you know how to play pass defense/how smart you are in the first place. This was, after all, supposed to be a strength of his when the Bears signed him in free agency.

Oh yeah, and then he left the game with cramps, bringing Anderson in. So there’s that too.

Also, for everybody’s sake, can we please get Pernell McPhee back healthy already? Because the Bears badly need to pressure the quarterback right now.

Leonard Floyd was credited with two  quarterback hits and a fumble recovery, the Bears’ first takeaway of the season. Aside from that, though, he simply has not dominated the way we thought he could. The absence of McPhee may be contributing to that as it did last year.

But hey, at least Willie Young finally got to go fishing.