2025 Week 3: Chicago Bears 31, Dallas Cowboys 14

By Kevin Schroeder
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Updated: September 28, 2025

Learning not to flinch. [Photo: Stacey Wescott, Chicago Trubune]

Player Grades

The grading scale goes from -2 to +2, in half-point increments, for each play. Screens are graded as runs. Penalties are counted in whatever phase they were committed. Pre- and post-snap penalties are in the “Misc.” column. “Short” throws are less than 15 yards, “Deep” is over 15 or more. Everything else (scrambles, throwaways, reads, etc.) is under “Miscellaneous.” Parentheses in a column denote grades/snaps from the opposite side of the ball and are not included in grades/snaps from the player’s usual side. Snap counts are from Pro Football Reference. Box score and other relevant info can be found at that link as well.

Note: Grading stopped this week when Dallas put Joe Milton in. I removed those snaps from the relevant snap counts, so snap counts should be pretty close. It’s possible I missed one here or there. I’m a one-man operation and I’m not perfect. It should be good enough. If it isn’t good enough for you, send payment to $KSchroeder312 on Cashapp or Venmo so I can do this full-time. Then it will be better.

Progress!

Offensively, yeah. Another step forward for Caleb, maybe his best game as a Bear. It certainly helps that he didn’t get sacked. First time in his young career that’s happened. And, really, a lot of the credit there goes to Caleb. Braxton Jones aside (and kudos to him, by the way) those are not pass blocking grades you’d expect to see in a game where Caleb didn’t get sacked. Caleb did a great job moving in the pocket and he was the most decisive I’ve seen him. Forget the stats, because, let’s face it – the Cowboys can’t stop a runny nose. The ghost of Russell Wilson tore these guys up. The exciting this is just how comfortable Caleb looked running the offense. Almost as exciting was the 19-play touchdown drive in the third quarter, because on that drive, the Bears were able to do what they couldn’t do against Minnesota. They ran the ball, they controlled the clock, and in doing so, they controlled the game. Defense, on the other hand…

They held Dallas to 14

They did. They also got help from Dallas on that front. The Cowboys shot themselves in the foot multiple times and blew multiple scoring opportunities. The Bears’ run defense remains awful and the pass rush is nearly non-existant. Multiple times during the game, the Bears brought Daniel Hardy in and went to a Bear front. Usually, Hardy was on the outside, though he was inside a couple times. It didn’t matter; neither configuration was any good. Dallas kept running at it and they kept being right. When Dallas passed, Hardy dropped into coverage and was totally lost. On one such occasion, he elected to go help cover a guy who was already double covered instead of just staying home and keeping an eye on the tight end in case he went out for a pass. Bet you can’t guess what happened from there. I get that Dennis Allen is going to have to get creative with the guys he brings on the pass rush since the defensive line pretty much sucks, save for Dexter, but this wasn’t accomplishing anything. Stop doing it. If you want to beef up the box, either put an extra safety out there and bring Brisker down or just play Hyppolite. Kyler Gordon coming back will help greatly. McCloud has been fine in Gordon’s absence, but he’s not the run defender Kyler is. Still, once Kyler is good to go, I would start McCloud opposite Stevenson. He’s earned it.

We weren’t the stupid team

I can’t remember the last time the Bears’ outcoached somebody, but they very clearly did here. Jerry Jones should’ve just gone all-out to hire Deion Sanders. Sure, his clock management is terrible and he would’ve drafted his sons and, barring any instant, major success, his coaching style would wear really thin with grown men once the initial excitement of “we get to play for Deion” wears off, which, if he introduces himself the way he did at Colorado, would take about 10 minutes, but at least if the media is talking about what a circus the team is, they’re not talking about what an idiot Jerry Jones is for giving away Micah Parsons. Instead, they’ve got Brian Schottenheimer, because reasons. I think very little of Mike McCarthy, but he at least knows how to be a head coach. Schottenheimer the younger just looks lost. Get rid of McCarthy, but promote his OC. Makes all the sense in the world. That’s how you get things like the fourth quarter, where Dallas gets the ball back down 17 with just under nine minutes left and uses almost half of that getting down to the 1, where they face a 3rd-and-goal against a team that hasn’t stopped the run well all season. Do they run it on 3rd down? Nope! They try a pass that doesn’t work. Now they’ve got two options: swallow your pride and take your 3 to make it a two-score game or run it, and even if you don’t get in, the Bears are now on their own 1 yard line. Maybe you force a safety from there, which is, in a way, better than the field goal since you get the ball right back. Yeah, you need a 2-point conversion, but down 15 with 4 minutes or so and all 3 timeouts – it can be done. So did they do either of those things? Sure didn’t! Instead, they tried to throw it again and Dak threw a pick in the endzone, giving the ball to the Bears at their 20, and all but ending the game. The Cowboys did force a 3-and-out, using all 3 timeouts in the process, then they stuck Joe Milton in, I guess so he could get some practice throwing a pick in the endzone, too. I can sort of understand calling the timeouts to try to force a turnover, but then you should send all 11 on the punt to try to block it, and they didn’t do that, so I guess they just called the timeouts to show Eberflus that you can, in fact, use them.

Monsters

Caleb, Odunze, Kmet, Braxton in pass pro, Dexter, Edmunds, Stevenson

Chipmunks

Jonah Jackson, all defensive line persons besides Dexter, and I suppose Sweat was okay enough to not find himself here.

Four Stars of the Game

Caleb Williams