Stock Up, Stock Down after Bears’ huge Week 5 win over Commanders

Week 5’s Thursday Night Football game featured a winless Chicago Bears team against an upstart Washington Commanders club that nearly every expert favored. And while the odds were stacked against the Bears getting their first win of the year, it felt like Justin Fields and the offense was on the verge of breaking out.

Remember: Fields and the Bears should’ve won Week 4’s game against the Broncos. He threw for over 300 yards and four touchdowns, yet somehow, Chicago found a way to lose. But last week’s loss did provide at least a glimmer of hope.

That hope turned into reality Thursday night, as the Bears ended their historic losing streak at 14 games.

Unfortunately, at 1-4, the Chicago Bears’ playoff chances are slim at best. But after a narrow loss on Sunday and an emphatic win on Thursday, there’s at least hope that Bears fans won’t have to hide behind mock drafts or cheer for another first-overall pick by November.

This mini Bears’ resurgence is due to a handful of Bears stepping up their games. However, not all is perfect at Halas Hall.

Here’s whose stock is up and whose is down as we enter Week 6.

Stock Up

DJ Moore

After five games, DJ Moore is on pace for over 1,800 receiving yards and 17 touchdowns on 92 catches in 2023 in what would be an absolutely historic season for a Bears receiver. That may not hold, but it shows how important Moore has been to this team. Adding him in the trade with Carolina for the first overall pick could go down as a franchise-saving move by General Manager Ryan Poles. He provides quarterback Justin Fields with that superstar playmaker he hasn’t had since college, and now we’re seeing the fruits of that partnership.

Justin Fields

The Bears may not be in the quarterback market again after all. It’s still too early to say with certainty that Fields is the franchise quarterback, but these last two weeks, he’s looked like what we all expected to see all the way back on draft night in 2021.

Over the last two games, Fields has thrown for over 600 yards and eight touchdowns with just one interception.

Here’s the caveat: Denver’s defense is a complete catastrophe, and while Washington has a fearsome defensive front, that secondary has been awful. Before we can say that Fields is 100% “The Guy,” he needs to have productive games against good teams and defenses.

Can he do it? I certainly hope so.

Coaching (barely)

In the name of fairness, I want to give the Chicago Bears coaches a shoutout, particularly Matt Eberflus and Luke Getsy. Clearly, they have not lost the locker room. They rallied their team and put together a good game plan, even making in-game adjustments.

Their seats are still hot, as far as I’m concerned. One win won’t save them, but at least for now, those seats are a little cooler.

Defense

Once again, this comes with the caveat of having played some bad teams recently, but credit where it’s due.

The defense showed out on Thursday night, getting two takeaways and five sacks on quarterback Sam Howell. They did this even in the face of multiple injuries both before and during the game. Thankfully, they have ten days to rest and heal before their next game.

Andrew Billings

One defender in particular who has earned some recognition has been the nose tackle Andrew Billings. He is undoubtedly Poles’ best free agency signing thus far, plugging up running gaps and even getting after the quarterback.

On Thursday night, Billings had a critical tackle-for-loss on 3rd-and-one on Washington’s opening drive. That set the tone for the entire defense for the rest of the night.

I’ve said it for the last few weeks on social media, and now I want to make it official on Bears Talk: Andrew Billings is to Ryan Poles what Akiem Hicks was to Ryan Pace.

Stock Down

Injuries

Thank George S. Halas that the Bears have a mini-bye this week.

Injuries were already piling up on defense before Week 5, and now we enter the weekend with four running backs hurt. By the fourth quarter, fullback Khari Blasingame was the Bears’ last hope to ice the game. Not to mention Teven Jenkins, who recently returned from IR, was forced to play more than the coaches planned, thanks to Lucas Patrick’s injury.

Every wide receiver not named DJ Moore

Not-so-fun-fact: DJ Moore was the only wide receiver to register a catch on Thursday night.

Chase Claypool was inactive and is now a Miami Dolphin. Darnell Mooney seemed out of sync with Justin Fields all night and missed all four of his targets.

Moore can’t put up 230 yards every week. Defenses are going to erase him. These other guys must step up, especially Mooney, who is in a contract year and has the longest-standing relationship with Fields.

Linebackers

Poles spent a lot of money on linebackers this offseason, and so far, they have not lived up to the hype. Granted, it’s hard on linebackers when the defensive line struggles as much as Chicago’s, but they still need to improve.

Tackling

For a while there, it looked like Justin Fields was double-dipping, playing for Chicago and Washington. Sam Howell was hard to tackle and picked up extra yards way too often for my liking, as did many other Commanders.

On a critical 3rd-and-long in Chicago territory in the 4th quarter, Howell broke away from four different tacklers and nearly got the first down. If it wasn’t for a cowardly decision by Ron Rivera not to go for it, I have no doubt they would have picked up the first down and potentially scored a touchdown.

This game could have gone very differently had that happened. The defense hopefully knows that their tackling performance was unacceptable and will work on it.

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