Chicago Bears Report Card: One player deserves majority of blame

"I thought he started off really well," Johnson said. "I don't know, I'll have to go  back and look at exactly where those incompletions came in. It certainly felt like it dried up a little bit."

Dried up? It looked like Death Valley for 10 possessions after the first somewhat  successful one to his TD run.

Momentum didn't just leave the building once J.J. McCarthy began to play like a real quarterback does.

“I think you certainly feel it when you're on the sideline there," Johnson  said. "You got it moving, got it going, then all of a sudden it starts going backwards.

"Negative plays are happening, whether it's penalties or the intentional grounding, things of that nature. Yeah, I mean, it cost us some points big-time.”

Here are the grades for a season-opening disaster, the kind that has everyone start to talk about going to the backup QB.

Passing game: D-

The receivers played well, even exceptional at times. The pass blocking was sufficient. One player held the ball too long and wasn't willing to get rid of it in anticipation of the receiver coming oen, or didn't give it a chance and wanted to escape the pocket too soon all night long. Williams blamed all of Brian Flores' blitzing for wanting to scramble, and liked it as an option to burn the Vikings blitzes.

"That's something I take pride in, something that Ben  and I talk about consistently, making defenses hurt when they want to drop out or play man-to-man, things like that," he said. "It's important. It's important to us, the offense, our team. Whatever's important to us is what I'm going to do.”

Maybe do it a little less and throw it a little more? Better yet, do it a  lot less. Flores blitzed Johnson's Detroit offenses and Jared Goff never scrambled but still managed to burn their defenses from the pocket with receivers no better as a group than the Bears have.

Overall, when Williams did throw after the first drive, he was less accurate than Rex Grossman and Bob Avellini combined It's hard to be accurate passing when your feet are trying to move all the time and leave the pocket in a panic.

Running game: D+

That's a tough defense to move off the line of scrimmage and there were times the speed back, Swift, managed to run tough. Still, they didn't get one breakaway run that they needed. What they really didn't have that Minnesota did have with Jordan Mason was the power back to push the pile back at 4.5 yards a carry. Kyle Monangai was overmatched in this one with three carries for 8 yards and one really poor attempt at a pass block. Roschon Johnson's bad foot needs to heal in a hurry, and by the way, Mason was acquired by the Vikings for a sixth-round pick and by swapping places with another Day 3 pick. He was available, Ryan Poles.

Pass defense: C

It was fine except when they tried to cover unlikely targets deep downfield. Aaron Jones twice got open deep out of the backfield, once for pass interference against Nahshon Wright and the other time when linebacker Noah Sewell couldn't keep up with him in coverage. Ruben Hyppolite II would have been better matched on him one on one because Sewell never has been a strong side linebacker with ability to play with his back to the line of scrimmage. Wright's 74-yard TD on an interception return should have been the game's decisive play but one play doesn't make a game. Three sacks and three tipped passes at or near the line of scrimmage, with good pressure much of the game, was enough to limit an inexperienced passer to only 143 yards, but not keep him from going crazy in th fourth quarter.

Run defense: C-

Holding Jones to 23 yards on eight runs was exactly what they wanted to do. The power back was the one who burned the five- and six-DB packages the Bears wanted to lean on with backup DBs. They gave up 68 yards on 15 carries to Mason. The 14-yard scramble TD by McCarthy is the kind of thing that will happen for defenses that play man-to-man coverage from time to time.

Special teams: D

It started off great, with a 23-yard punt return by Devin Duvernay. Then it degenerated into Cairo Santos missing the key 50-yarder after Will Reichard made one 59 yards going in the same direction, giving up 17 yards per punt return, a deflected punt, and Santos failing at the end to execute a simple kickoff. It's not that difficult to kick one out of the end zone in the NFL now with these kickoff rules and that's what they needed Santos to do in order to have about a minute left for a final drive. He failed to get it out of the end zone just like  he failed to give them a two-touchdown lead with a missed 50-yard field goal.

Coaching: C-

Johnson's first fourth-down gamble was unnecessary at that point in the game. Aggressiveness is one thing, but when you're just getting established with a 7-3 lead, it's better to take the field goal at that point. It's tough to be to hard on this decision when the reason it didn't work was Williams didn't set his feet and deliver the ball accurately to an open receiver. The decision not to use an onside kick at the end kick off deep out of the end zone was sound, even a good one. The kicker's execution—which they were probably in favor of as John McKay famously said of the winless Buccaneers—was not good. The 12 penalties for 127 yard is horribly sloppy play that the coaches thought had been drilled out of players with all of that attention to details they had in training camp.

They had more than twice as many yards in flags as they had yards rushing from their running backs.

They had more than twice as many yards in flags as they had yards rushing from their running backs.

And by the way, whatever happened to the 12-personnel packages burning defenses?

Overall: D+

If they play this poorly against the Lions on the road, Detroit will be saying "Ben who?"