Bears and Seahawks set football back with Thursday night snoozefest

The Chicago Bears and Seattle Seahawks played in the most boring game of football on Thursday night. Three scoring drives resulting in three field goals were the only action fans got as Seattle won 6-3 in a game that featured more punts than points.

The game started inconspicously, with a Seattle drive down the field that resulted in a Jason Myers 27-yard field goal. The Bears top three red zone defense showed up, stalling a Seahawks drive that got down to the nine-yard line and the Seahawks led 3-0. The next six drives, which combined for 79 total yards, were all punts.

As Underdog Fantasy's Coley Mick put it, the teams seemed like killing football was their goal.

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The string of punts ended with two straight scoring drives—which sounds unbelievable for this game—both field goals, of course, and the half mercifully ended at 6-3. If you've been paying attention, that means no points were scored in the second half.

The second half featured only two drives in which the teams got into opponent territory and both teams promptly turned the ball over. Pharaoh Brown took a screen pass four yards upfield before Kyler Gordon punched the ball out, recovered the fumble and took it the distance. The referees ruled it a touchdown and it looked like the scoop n' score could have been the spark this game desperately needed. However, the refs ruled him down by contact when he recovered the fumble and the Bears gained a total of one yard on six plays on the ensuing drive before punting the ball away.

Chicago was driving down the field and threatening to tie the game up and send it to overtime, which I think would have definitely ended in a tie, but this game deserved to end on another failed drive. After getting down to the Seattle 40-yard line with 37 seconds to go, Caleb Williams threw three straight incompletions and an interception on fourth down to seal the victory for the Seahawks.

To recap, this game had three scoring drives, two turnovers and 13 punts. The stats are worse. Geno Smith threw for 160 yards, his second lowest output of the year, and Williams threw for 122 yards, his third lowest of the year, and an interception.

The Bears are now 4-12, and I'd argue that this isn't really embarrassing for them as we've seen them lose in worse ways this season. However, the Seahawks are fighting with the Los Angeles Rams for the NFC West title and they can't even score a touchdown against the Bears. The Rams can clinch the division this week but if they don't next week's Seahawks-Rams matchup will decide the division. If the same Seattle team shows up in a division-deciding game you might as well hand the Rams the title.

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