Johnson rips Bears' offense after loss to Lions

CHICAGO — Despite a 19-16 loss to the Detroit Lions, the Bears locked up with No. 2 seed in the NFC playoffs Sunday because of Washington’s win over Philadelphia.

Though the prospect of playing multiple home games in the postseason has long been a goal of Bears coach Ben Johnson, he was in no mood to celebrate given how his team performed in the season finale.

“I was not pleased with the offense today,” Johnson said.

He added: “We can’t dig ourselves in a hole like that. I was disappointed with the offense as a whole. I let those guys know that. And we’ll be better for it.”

One week after coming up short in a shootout against the San Francisco 49ers, Chicago suffered its second straight loss after being held scoreless for three quarters.

“That’s one we’ll have to take a look at the tape and figure out why that was,” Johnson said. “I didn’t feel like it was one of our more elaborate plans. I felt it was one of our simpler plans. We need to do a better job of executing it and coaching it up.”

Quarterback Caleb Williams said the Bears did not carry the right energy into the game, which forced them to play from behind throughout.

“We came out a little flat, and I think we’ve got to work on having urgency from the jump and get that going,” Williams said.

When asked for his biggest takeaway from the loss, Williams characterized the Bears’ play as “not good enough to win.”

“We’ve got to get better both sides of the ball,” Williams said. “Speaking of offense, whatever happens on the other side of the ball, it’s not something we can control. We have to control what we can. We’ve got to come out starting fast, being better, and we’ll do that here coming up.”

Chicago entered the fourth quarter down 16-0 and scored its first points when Williams connected with Jahdae Walker for a 25-yard touchdown with 14:20 to play.

Williams’ touchdown pass broke the franchise single-season passing record, which had been held by Erik Kramer (3,838 yards) since 1995. Williams finished the season with 3,942 passing yards and was 58 yards shy of becoming the first Bears quarterback in history to throw for 4,000 yards.

The 24-year-old signal-caller briefly acknowledged the milestone postgame.

“Need to win the game,” Williams said. “Didn’t want to leave it up to another team to put us in the seeding that we want to be in. I don’t know what the case happened with that game, but we didn’t execute the way we needed to. That number is the number and so be it.”

The Bears looked set to pull off another late comeback when they tied the score at 16-16 after Colston Loveland scored on a 1-yard touchdown followed by Cole Kmet converting a 2-point attempt.

Chicago got another scoring opportunity one possession later when Kevin Byard intercepted Lions quarterback Jared Goff with 2:23 to play, which marked the safety’s league-leading seventh interception of the season. The Bears quickly went three-and-out and decided to punt on fourth-and-5 from their 31-yard line “because we had three timeouts, and we felt like we were going to get the ball back,” Johnson said.

The Bears never got the ball back as the Lions drove 39 yards down the field to set up the winning field goal.

Chicago’s defense has given up 1,313 yards over its past three games, including 433 to Detroit on Sunday. But Johnson continued to place the onus on Chicago’s offense for why the Bears came up short in Week 18.

“We can’t afford to have a phase — one of our three phases — play like we did today,” Johnson said. “So we’re going to have to pick it up. Like I said, I get fired up just thinking about it right now, and I know our guys too.”

The Bears won the NFC North despite finishing 2-4 in division play. They join the 1971 49ers (2-4 in NFC West), 1982 Packers (1-2 in NFC Central during strike-shortened season) and 2010 Chiefs (2-4 in AFC West) as the only teams since the 1970 merger to win their division despite having a losing record in division games.

Chicago will host Green Bay, the NFC’s No. 7 seed, on Saturday (8 p.m. ET, Prime Video) at Soldier Field.