2026 Week 8: Chicago Bears 34, Seattle Seahawks 17

By Kevin Schroeder
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Updated: November 8, 2026

Reunited and it feels so good. [Photo: Bailey Black/Chicago Bears]

Player grades can be found at the Qwality Sports Substack.

The search for a better grading system continues

I do not think Swift had a better game than Caleb. It is a quirk of grading that he came out with a higher score largely on a bunch of half-points where he was right but someone blew their block. For a few years now, I’ve been looking at ways to come up with a grade out of 100 like PFF does, but I haven’t come up with anything that doesn’t add multiple extra layers of subjectivity to something that’s already subjective. I actually talked with someone this past spring who used to be involved with PFF who said they had a formula, but he couldn’t tell me what it is. I’ll keep working on coming up with one myself. For now, all I can say is that this is why I link the box score with the grade sheets.

As for Caleb himself, I did think he was better than his grade indicated, but I was unhappy with some of his decision-making. He missed a handful of opportunities in this one by either being late on a read or not seeing a guy open altogether. It felt like he was being overly cautious, which to an extent, I can understand in a game like this.

What was up with the run game?

For one, I don’t think Jonah Jackson is 100%. For two, Joe Thuney hasn’t been the All-Pro he was last year. For three, Garrett Bradbury just isn’t very good. For four, there were several instances of guys not blocking the guys they need to block. I’m not talking about losing the rep (not that there weren’t plenty of those), I’m talking about attempting to block the wrong person entirely. Some of that has to fall on Bradbury as well. He’s the center, he’s supposed to make the line calls.

The Jeffery Simmons effect

Immediate and immense. Rarely was he handled by one man, which set Montez Sweat up to feast. If the Chargers would quit being stubborn, we could keep two quality edge rushers on the field just about all the time and then we’re really cooking with gas. I think I would still advocate for trading for an edge rusher *cough* Khalil Mack *cough* over a corner because, a. I think an edge rusher would have a bigger multiplier effect and b. I think the improvement from James Lynch to someone like, oh, I don’t know, Khalil Mack, is significantly larger than the improvement from Jaylon Johnson (I assume Muhammad is taking Stevenson’s spot once he’s healthy) to any of the names I’ve heard thrown out there as potential targets at corner (Riq Woolen, Nahshon Wright, Mike Sainristil).

Anyway, the big benefit to the Simmons trade was being able to get pressure with four guys, meaning fewer guys taken out of coverage to rush, meaning less pressure on the guys tasked with covering receivers. It is for this reason that blitzing on third down at the end of the first half was utterly indefensible. Hold them to a long field goal attempt. If they make it, tip your cap, give your defense a fist bump for holding them to three and take a seven-point lead into the half. Instead, Allen blitzes, Jaxon Smith-Njigba torches Stevenson, and it’s six points.

Something resembling actual stadium news

I’d make a joke here along the lines of “in case you were asleep all week, there was an election in America,” but the insane amount of campaign spending in this country means you can’t turn on the TV within three months of an election without being bombarded by political ads. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like there were even more of them during sporting events this cycle than in the past. Maybe it was just a result of the way political commitees were buying ads – it’s sometimes easier to just buy the ad time for an entire broadcast than to run in individual relevant markets. Thus, we got treated to ads about things like the governor’s race in Texas, a state I do not live nor have even ever been within 600 miles of, when otherwise, the uncompetitive nature of most races in the greater Chicago metro would mean a relative lack of pestering via such dreck. My vote for 2028 goes to whichever Democrat vows to pack the Supreme Court so they can overturn Citizens United. Anyway, that’s not wha you’re here. Relevant to our interests is that JB Pritzker won a third term as governor of Illinois to the surprise of nobody. The fall veto session for the Illinois legislature is coming up and after productive meetings with Bears minority owner Pat Ryan and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, Pritzker wants to get a bill drafted in the first week of the session and have a vote on it in the second. The framework of this bill would give the Bears the ability to pick between Chicago and Arlington Heights, or I suppose whoever else pops up while Kevin Warren farts around, with the stadium being financed by the Bears, infrastructure investments from the state, and the stadium being nominally publicly owned. One potential turd in the punch bowl is the resignation as Illinois House Speaker of Chris Welch due to his poor handling of an investigation into harassment allegations against another state representative. It seems like enough progress was made over the summer that the legislature can still get it done; this is just another dumb complication because nothing can ever be easy. On the lesser side of the state line, one guy who didn’t win re-election amidst the Democratic Party looking at what the Bears did to the Seahawks Monday night and saying “we can top that” is Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston, who was heavily involved in Indiana’s effort to ignore the glaringly obvious fact that they were being used as leverage. Still attempting to ignore it is Indiana governor Mike Braun, who this week said that the Bears need to commit to building in Indiana soon, or else the state will move on to other economic opportunities for the space. In other news, Halle Berry needs to return my calls for a date very soon, otherwise I will move on to calling Jennifer Love Hewitt.

What does it mean for Tampa Bay on Sunday?

The one thing the Buccaneers do legitimately well is defend the run. Expect results on the ground similar to what we saw in Seattle. The ball is going to have to be moved predominantly through the air. If the Bears can find a way to run the ball against Tampa, this could turn into a splattering. The Bucs just beat the Falcons in a game in a rainstorm where Baker Mayfield didn’t complete a pass. Before that, they creamed the Panthers. I think that game says more about the Panthers than it does the Bucs. Carolina just seems broken and I can’t put my finger on why. They don’t look like the team we saw week one that looked like they could be decent, at least offensively.

Monsters

Caleb, Odunze, Burden, even though I do think his grade looks better than he really was, Swift deserves a mention here – his decision-making was good, Loveland, Wright, Sweat, Simmons, Bush, Lewis, Thieneman

Chipmunks

Jonah Jackson, Bradbury, Turner, Jarrett, Street

Four Stars of the Game

Jeffery Simmons