National Football League

Detroit Lions vs. Chicago Bears: This Week 4 game is filled with intrigue

Updated Sep. 28, 2021 8:26 p.m. ET

By Martin Rogers
FOX Sports Columnist

We don’t usually look ahead to Sunday games in the National Football League as early as Tuesday, but so cursed are the Chicago Bears and the Detroit Lions that we can’t be certain some grave misfortune won’t come over them in the next couple of days. And that would be too much misery to write (or read) about.

As it is, at Soldier Field this weekend, something very unusual is going to happen. Either the Lions or the Bears are going to have something to smile about amid a season that has so far been a catalog of demoralizing ineptitude for one and laugh-or-we’ll-cry misfortune for the other.

Barring a bizarro-world occurrence such as a 0-0 tie after overtime, which maybe isn’t as utterly bizarre as you’d think, one of the two most tortured teams in the NFL is going to get a win Sunday, even if it is only a Band-Aid-sized answer for a gaping wound.

Given that this is a story happily leaning a little toward the oddball side, let’s start in a slightly unexpected place: with Mitch Trubisky, in Buffalo.

Trubisky, the much-maligned former Bears QB, had a pretty quiet day in his backup role to Josh Allen on Sunday. Called into action for one pass against the Washington Football Team, Trubisky completed it, for one yard, as the Bills comfortably cruised to victory.

The thing is, that yard of net passing productivity was as much as Chicago, with highly touted rookie Justin Fields under center, accomplished across an entire afternoon of action as it was ripped to pieces by the Cleveland Browns.

Fields went 6-for-20 with 68 yards passing, gains mitigated by the 67 yards given up on the nine times he was sacked, equating to the solitary helping of one lonely, friendless yard, the lowest tally by any team in any game since the 2009 Cincinnati Bengals. The Bears’ average of 1.1 yards per play was the second fewest of any team this century.

"We didn’t expect great things, but what we got was horrendous," FS1’s Chris Broussard said on "First Things First." "A lot of this is on [head coach] Matt Nagy and that woeful offensive line. A lot of it was out of Fields' hands … but it’s been ugly."

It was a dismal way to fail, sure, but is it better to lose because you were thoroughly inept or do so in the most improbable fashion, with a tear-your-heart-out, last-gasp thunderbolt of a field goal?

That’s what happened to the Lions on Sunday, victims of that monstrous, 66-yard boot from Justin Tucker that you’ve probably seen replayed dozens of times. It was part bad luck and part their own fault, with the Baltimore Ravens having been allowed to convert a fourth-and-19 to put Tucker in range as time wound down. On top of that, the referees missed a delay-of-game penalty that would have pushed the yardage back to something unmanageable, even for the most clutch kicker of them all.

Missed delay-of-game call cost the Lions: Last Call Week 3

Mike Pereira and Dean Blandino react to a missed delay-of-game call on the final drive of the game between the Baltimore Ravens and Detroit Lions. Were the Ravens gifted a victory by the refs?

As fans grumbled that it was the "most Lions way to lose ever," Detroit fell to 0-3 to sit at the foot of the NFC North, the exact spot it has finished the past three seasons.

"I know this city and this franchise have gone through a lot of gut punches in the last few years, but I’m telling you, we will remain true and remain resilient, and the gut punches will stop," quarterback Jared Goff said.

In Detroit’s case, the focus of the loss is the awe-inspiring feat it took to beat them (Tucker’s kick). It spares the mass recrimination and second-guessing that was happening in Chicago.

The Bears, from Nagy to general manager Ryan Pace, are getting roasted by all, and it’s difficult to find anything of substance to muster in their defense.

When one of your own players (Jimmy Graham) retweets how statistically horrible you’ve been, it’s pretty bad. Former players, pundits, fans — everyone, it seems — are lining up to take a shot. For now, Fields, Andy Dalton and Nick Foles are all in contention to start against the Lions.

Both fan bases might be fooled into thinking that things can’t get any worse, except that this is the Bears and Lions, so they most assuredly can, and for one of them this weekend, they probably will.

The Lions began the campaign with some optimism under new coach Dan Campbell. In Week 1, Detroit nearly engineered one of the most incredible comebacks in NFL history. Down 24 to the San Francisco 49ers at the two-minute warning, they came all the way back to within eight and were driving down the field late in the game, only for Goff to then go cold and throw three incomplete passes to torpedo the revival attempt.

That was a gut punch. What happened Sunday, with Tucker’s kick cruelly dinging off the crossbar and going over, was an absolute haymaker.

FOX Bet has Chicago at -154 and Detroit at +135, a difference mostly attributed to home field. In truth, there isn't much separating these two clubs. How could there be, when so much has gone wrong?

The bright side? Easy: One team that has had little cause for cheer is finally going to get some.

For the loser, however, the hits just keep on coming.

Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports and the author of the FOX Sports Insider Newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.