Swift Slammed the Door: Bears Handle the Champs in Seattle

Seattle had not given up a touchdown on an opening drive in 16 straight games. Chicago needed one drive to end that, and then spent the rest of Monday night showing everybody why it might be the most complete team in the NFC right now. The Bears went into the home of the defending Super Bowl champions and won 34-17 — never trailing, answering the one real Seattle run with two fourth-quarter touchdowns, and improving to 6-2 with a third straight win since Caleb Williams came back from his hamstring injury.

Seventeen plays to say hello

The tone was set before Seattle's offense ever got comfortable. Chicago's first possession went 80 yards on 17 plays and ate 8:32 of clock, with Williams completing 8 of 10 passes for 58 yards and finishing it with a 1-yard touchdown toss to Luther Burden III. Seattle answered with a Jason Myers field goal, Chicago tacked on two Cairo Santos kicks — from 44 and 38 yards — and the Bears led 13-3 late in the half.

Sam Darnold finally landed a punch with 30 seconds left before halftime, hitting Jaxon Smith-Njigba down the left sideline for a 43-yard touchdown on third-and-10. Myers missed the extra point, though, and 13-9 at the break flattered a Seattle offense that spent most of the half running into a wall wearing orange sleeves.

Big Jeff's first night at work

That wall was the story of the night. Jeffery Simmons, acquired from Tennessee last week in a deal that included two first-round picks, sacked Darnold on Seattle's second drive and never really left the backfield's neighborhood. He finished with six tackles, two tackles for loss, a sack and a pass defensed, and Bears coach Ben Johnson called his impact “profound.” Chicago held Seattle to 252 total yards and one conversion on 11 third downs, and held the Seahawks' run game — rebuilt around newly acquired guard Quenton Nelson — to 81 yards.

“When I attacked the field, I wasn't worried about the trade,” Simmons said. “I wasn't worried about all the outside noise. All I was worried about is play after play, just give the team everything I got.”

Williams did his part with the cleanest kind of efficiency: 24 of 34 for 247 yards and a touchdown, no turnovers, one sack taken against one of the league's stingiest defenses. When Seattle cut it to 20-9 on Swift's first touchdown — a 1-yard run with 5:38 left in the third, at the end of a 10-play, 69-yard drive — the game felt managed. It was about to get loud anyway.

Seattle's one real swing

The fourth quarter opened with Austin Booker blocking Myers' 33-yard field goal, and Seattle still would not go away. DeMarcus Lawrence ripped the ball out of Colston Loveland's hands and recovered it at the Chicago 25, and three plays later Darnold found Cooper Kupp for a 7-yard touchdown. The two-point conversion to Tory Horton made it 20-17 with 11:46 left, Lumen Field was shaking, and the defending champs had all the momentum there is.

They kept it for about three minutes.

Swift closed it

Chicago's answer started with a gift: a delay-of-game penalty wiped out the stop Seattle thought it had, and on the next play Kalif Raymond took a quick Williams pass 39 yards to the Seattle 5. Swift ran it in around right end with 8:28 left — 27-17, breathing room restored. Then Booker got a hand on a Darnold pass, defensive lineman James Lynch came down with it for what he told reporters was his first interception since high school, and Swift finished the short field with his third touchdown, from 5 yards out with 4:41 to play.

Three rushing touchdowns, all in the second half, on 27 carries for 69 of the hardest yards available. It was Swift's second three-touchdown game of the season, after his Week 1 hat trick against Carolina. “Swifty ran super hard,” Johnson said. “I know that he didn't have a ton of yards, but 27 attempts and three touchdowns, every single yard was earned by him.”

Seattle's Mike Macdonald did not dress it up: “We got beat. No other way to sugar coat it. When you look at the things that it takes to win in our league, we didn't do those things and they did.”

The shoe fight Caleb left at the door

The loudest subplot of the week never made it onto the field. The NFL had fined Williams in each of the previous two weeks — $11,941 after the Atlanta game and $23,882 after the New England game — for wearing Caddix cleats with an unauthorized logo showing, and Williams had said he planned to keep wearing them, citing the safety design he trusts. On Monday night he came out in matte black cleats with the logo covered, played turnover-free football, and explained himself afterward in about as few words as the league could ask for: “Just to calm things down, man. It was a big week, and not here to create any BS toward the team.”

Seattle left with a grievance of its own. Referee Shawn Smith was asked in the postgame pool report about three plays — a hit on Tory Horton on the Seahawks' first possession, the no-call when Darnold was hit while sliding in the first quarter, and an offensive pass interference call on Smith-Njigba in the third that wiped out a big gain — and defended his crew on all three, saying on the Darnold play that the officials saw no contact to the head or neck area. The calls will be argued about in Seattle all week. The scoreboard is harder to argue with: the loss was Seattle's first by more than four points in 30 games, regular season and playoffs, a streak the Associated Press noted was the fourth longest of the Super Bowl era.

Previously Staff’s read: In eight days, Chicago has beaten last season's AFC champions in New England and the defending Super Bowl champions in their own building. The Bears sit a half-game behind 6-1 Minnesota in the NFC North, hold the conference's top wild-card spot, and — for now — all four North teams would make the playoffs if the season ended today. Chicago hosts Tampa Bay on Sunday night with a chance to keep the pressure on.

Seattle is 4-4, has lost three of four, and woke up outside the NFC playoff picture, a game back of the final wild-card spot. The Seahawks host Arizona on Sunday knowing the margin they played with all last season is gone. “We've got to improve very quickly in the run game,” guard Grey Zabel said. “Got to get back to running the ball, take the pressure off our quarterback.”