On the Week 8 edition of “Monday Night Football,” the Seattle Seahawks host the Chicago Bears. Seattle enters this game fresh off a victory over the previously undefeated Kansas City Chiefs, who snapped a two-game losing skid. The Seahawks defense is on the mend and looks like one of the best units in the league again, but will face one of its toughest tests of the season on Monday night.
Chicago enters having won its two games since Caleb Williams returned from injury at quarterback, improving to 5-2 in the process. The Bears look like one of the best offenses in the NFL whenever Williams is on the field, but they, too, face their toughest test of the season on Monday night.
Will Seattle pull off back-to-back wins, or will the Bears ruin their night with a road upset?
How to watch live Seahawks vs. Bears
When the Bear has the ball
Chicago scored 59, 31 and 30 points in Caleb Williams’ three starts against the Minnesota Vikings in a heavy rain. The Bears piled up 552, 368 and 405 yards in those three games, and turned the ball over just twice in those contests.
For the season (including the game against Minnesota), Williams has completed 71% of his passes for an average of 8.2 yards per attempt, both career-high figures. He threw five touchdowns against one interception and rushed 24 times for 128 yards and two additional scores.
Williams generally threw short passes, with an average throw depth of just 7.0 yards, according to Tru Media. Despite this, he made explosive passing plays at the third-highest rate in the league (10.7% of dropbacks). That’s thanks in large part to the fact that the Bears averaged 6.4 yards after the catch per completion on his throws, the fourth-best mark in the league.
However, the Seahawks limit YAC as well as almost any team in football. They gave up just 4.5 yards after the catch per completion, which ranked third best in the NFL. They play shell coverage a lot, and they rally the ball and tackle the secondary as well as anyone. Their defensive backs and linebackers rarely miss opportunities to bring ball-carriers to the ground.
The Bears generally like to run the ball more often than almost any team in the league, with a 48.7% rush rate, according to Tru Media. The Seahawks are elite at stopping the run, however, as we saw last week against Kenneth Walker III. D’Andre Swift and Roschon Johnson will have their work cut out for them here, even against a defense that plays a lot of nickel and dime and doesn’t load the box.
The Chicago offensive line will have to do a lot of work to move Seattle’s defensive front off the ball, which has proven very difficult for opposing lines this year.
When the Seahawks have the ball
Seattle’s offense is built mostly around the exploits of superstar wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba. JSN leads the NFL with 867 receiving yards, 43 receiving first downs and eight receiving touchdowns. He was targeted on 36.3% of the team’s pass attempts, ranking No. 1 mark in the NFL. So is his 33.9% target-per-route-run rate, which is well ahead of CeeDee Lamb’s.
Smith-Njigba has more receptions than the next three closest players on the Seahawks: AJ Barner, Cooper Kupp and Rashid Shaheed combined for 53. His 867 yards are also more than the trio’s 562 combined. They’re supporting pieces at best, and they’re usually barely involved in the offense. Shaheed is also out Monday night, which means secondary options will be more limited than usual.
The Bears, like everyone else in the league, don’t have anyone who can cover Smith-Njigba. It’s not possible. The best chance to limit him is to go to Sam Darnold and force rush decisions that lead to turnovers. Darnold, despite missing time due to injury, led the NFL with eight interceptions.
Under pressure, he was terrible, completing just 26 of 66 passes for 331 yards, two touchdowns and four picks. He ranks second-to-last in the league in EPA per dropback on pressured plays, according to Tru Media. If the Bears can get in his face, they can force him into mistakes and flip the game on its head.
One thing that will help them in that effort is the arrival of defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons, who is a game wrecker on the interior. Simmons is among the league leaders in both pressures and sacks when lined up inside. He’ll have to deal with what is now one of the best guard duos in the league in Quenton Nelson and Gray Zabel, and Simmons will also see his snaps limited in his first game with his new team. (Nelson will likely play fully in his Seattle debut, given how reluctant teams are to rotate offensive linemen.)
Seattle’s running game should get a boost from the expected return of Zach Charbonnet and Jadarian Price. Charbonnet hasn’t played the entire season after tearing his ACL during last year’s Super Bowl run, while Price has been out since Week 3 with a chest injury. The combination of Emanuel Wilson and George Holani has been largely ineffective, and though Charbonnet and Price may produce slightly below-average efficiency, they represent an improvement over the incumbent duo. The Bears have given up an average of 4.4 yards per carry this season, which ranks 23rd in the league.
Prediction
Seattle’s defense looks like the unit we expected it to be coming into the year. The Seahawks just shut down Kenneth Walker last week; they should do the same with D’Andre Swift. That puts the entire game on Williams’ right shoulder. He can do that, of course, but it will be very difficult to do against Mike Macdonald’s unit. That’s especially true if the Seahawks can get Price and Charbonnet back into the lineup at running back and can run the ball with some degree of success. Pick the Seahawks to take care of business at home.
Prediction: Seahawks 24, Bears 20