Chargers win as Bears miss last-second field goal

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: The Bears missed a last-second field goal and lost today at Soldier Field.

This time it wasn’t as big a game as last year’s playoff heartbreaker, and it was Eddy Pineiro instead of Cody Parkey, but the result was a 17-16 Bears loss to the Chargers today.

Bears head coach Matt Nagy will be heavily criticized for his play calling throughout today’s game, including at the end, when he decided to settle for a 41-yard field goal instead of trying to pick up extra yardage to make it closer.

Mitchell Trubisky was better than last week, and he had a big run to put the Bears into field-goal range at the end, but the Bears’ offense is still not functioning at the same level it did last season.

Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers wasn’t great, completing 19 of 29 passes for 201 yards with a touchdown and an interception, but he did just enough on a day when the Bears’ defense largely shut down the Chargers’ running game.

The win improves the Chargers to 3-5 and drops the Bears to 3-4. That’s not where either of these teams, coming off playoff seasons in 2018, expected to be right now. Both teams have a whole lot of work to do.