Taking a look at 3 numbers to know ahead of the 49ers matchup against the Bears
Nobody will confuse the Chicago Bears offense with the Buffalo Bills offense.
However, the Bears’ offense does something better than Buffalo’s, which played a role in the Bills’ 35-10 win over the 49ers last Sunday night.
The San Francisco 49ers will face a formerly dysfunctional Bears team under Matt Eberflus, maybe now less dysfunctional under Thomas Brown, in their first game at Levi’s Stadium since the loss to Seattle in Week 11.
So what does the Bears offense do better than the Bills? That’s where we start this week’s numbers to know:
5.4
The Bears offense has a 5.4 turnover percentage, which is second-best in the league.
Last week, I mentioned how Buffalo’s offense had improved on turnovers from last season, turning the ball over on 5.7 percent of its drives. The Bills offense scored 35 points on a struggling 49ers defense without turning the ball over once. Buffalo had ten drives against the 49ers, five of which resulted in touchdowns, and the 49ers could not force a single mistake from Josh Allen and the company.
This week, San Francisco has to deal with another team that doesn’t turn the ball over much. This time, instead of facing a superstar quarterback, it’ll be against a quarterback making his 13th career start.
It’s been a roller-coaster season for Bears rookie quarterback Caleb Williams, who already has to deal with his third offensive coordinator and second head coach within his first year. But despite the shakiness of the foundation of the Bears, Williams has stayed steady with his play.
After throwing four interceptions over his first three starts, Williams went Weeks 4 and 5 without an interception before throwing his fifth in Week 6 against the Jaguars. Since that Week 6 interception, Williams has thrown an NFL-rookie record 232 consecutive passes without an interception.
Not only is it a rookie record, but Williams is on the cusp of a Bears franchise record—his current 1.2 interception percentage sits atop the Bears franchise lead (minimum 250 passing attempts), just ahead of Jim Harbaugh’s 1990 season, where he threw an interception on 1.9 percent of pass attempts.
The 49ers defense still hasn’t had an interception since Isaac Yiadom picked off Geno Smith in last month’s loss to Seattle. While a rookie quarterback is usually a good sign for a defense desperate for turnovers, Caleb Williams has proven challenging to intercept.
32.3
The Bears offense scores on 32.3 percent of drives, the eighth-worst rate in the league.
The comparison to the Bills’ offense takes a hard stop at the turnover percentage for the Bears’ offense. While the Bears score at a 32.3 percent rate, the Bills’ offense scores on 49.2 percent of its drives, tied for the second-best rate in the league. In fact, the Bills are in the top ten in plenty of offensive categories, including turnover percentage.
The only thing Chicago’s offense does well is not turn the ball over. Everything else, they struggle mightily in. Chicago ranks in the bottom ten in:
- Points per game (20.1)
- Yards per game (299.1)
- Yards per play (4.6 – league-worst)
- First downs per game (18.3)
- Passing yards per game (190.1)
- Rushing yards per game (109.0)
San Francisco’s defense has had some issues since the bye week, allowing an average of 28.3 points per game in the four games, although that average is boosted by the 38 scored by Green Bay and the 35 scored by Buffalo. Chicago’s offense might offer a break from the high scoring, as the Bears haven’t scored more than 28 points since the middle of October and only twice this season.
San Francisco’s defense has struggled to force turnovers since the bye, and those struggles might continue against a Bears team that doesn’t make mistakes. But if Nick Sorensen’s unit struggles in everything else Chicago’s offense has to offer, then there are some severe issues that need to be addressed.
7
The 49ers currently have a seven percent chance to make the postseason, according to the NFL.com playoff picture.
This is the only number that will be relevant for the 49ers from now on. San Francisco entered the 2024 season with hefty Super Bowl expectations and has drastically fallen short of that goal.
And while the vibes around the 5-7 49ers say they are not a playoff team, the math still says there’s a chance, and one chance is all it takes.
That chance would need to start with a win on Sunday over the Bears. A win doesn’t do a ton mathematically – a win would raise the 49ers’ playoff chances to 10 percent – but a big enough win could start to change the thoughts around the 49ers viability as a playoff team. San Francisco hasn’t really had a game this season where they’ve looked head-and-shoulders better than its opponent. The closest games to that feeling were Week 1 against the Jets and Week 4 against the Patriots, but even those wins weren’t the best performances by the 49ers.
The only way the playoff vibes feel like they can return is with a blowout over what should be a lesser Bears team. It cannot be another win where San Francisco keeps its opponent around just to win out a win at the end. It needs to be a pillar-to-post ass-kicking, something the 49ers have failed to do all season. Then maybe such a win carries momentum into next Thursday against the Rams, where the 49ers would have a chance to get back to .500.
And then, yadda yadda yadda. I understand—as do the 49ers—that the playoffs are a long shot at the moment, and a lot needs to happen but wins help. A loss would drop San Francisco’s playoff chances to two percent, still mathematically alive, but an eight-loss team isn’t going to get in.
The math and vibes are against the 49ers, but a win on Sunday could (and still likely won’t) be the start of a magical run.