Larry Mayer

After watching tape of Sunday's 28-21 loss to the Packers, Bears coach Ben Johnson spoke to reporters virtually Monday about five things that stood out to him:

(1) Johnson felt that all three phases did not perform as well as they needed to, especially in the first half when the Packers took a 14-3 lead.

The Bears punted on each of their first three possessions, mustering only one first down, and were limited to 71 yards on 28 plays in the first half. The defense allowed Jordan Love to throw touchdown passes of 45, 41 and 23 yards in the game.

"Offensively, we need to start faster than what we did," Johnson said. "Obviously, 71 yards in the first half wasn't good enough, only three points on five possessions. Defensively, [we] gave up too many explosives. And then special teams-wise, I didn't feel like our kickoff or kickoff return units played like they're capable of doing.

"We dug ourselves into a hole. Credit to the guys that came through. Made it a game there in the second half, but just wasn't enough when you're facing a good team on the road."

On their first two possessions, holding and false start penalties put the Bears in third-and-15 situations that they did not pick up.

"When you play good teams on the road, every little thing matters," Johnson said. "All the details matter. We start off on offense with two penalties in the first two drives and we don't overcome them. We just didn't start well enough. You've got to utilize all 60 minutes of your brand of football."

(2) Johnson revealed that the offense's second-half resurgence was due to improved execution and not the result of any halftime adjustments.

The Bears scored on their first three possessions of the second half via two TDs and a field goal, eventually tying the game 21-21 midway through the fourth quarter. In the second half, the offense produced 244 yards and converted 7 of 9 third-down plays after going 1 of 7 on third down in the first half.

Asked what adjustments he made in the second half, Johnson said: "Not one. I stuck to the game plan, and we ended up doing a better job executing and guys played hard and we made some plays."

(3) Johnson reiterated that Green Bay's game-sealing interception with :22 remaining was a missed opportunity for the Bears.

On fourth-and-1 from the Packers' 14, Caleb Williams rolled to his left and lofted a pass to Cole Kmet in the end zone. But cornerback Keisean Nixon, who appeared to be covering DJ Moore on the play, drifted back and picked off the pass.

"From my perspective, it was a play that had a lot of options, just like I alluded to last night, and Cole happened to be the one that popped the most," Johnson said. "It's a good play by Nixon for them. He came off his guy and made a play on the ball. But had we seen it a little bit sooner and given Cole a better chance, I think we would have been pretty happy with that result."

Williams could have run the ball, but two defenders were closing in on him, and he didn't feel he could pick up the first down. Another possibility, D'Andre Swift, was covered in the flat.

Asked if he felt Moore was an option over the middle, Johnson said: "I didn't see him being an answer in that time. I think he came open more after the ball was released from Caleb. Nixon was man-to-man with DJ and was trailing him and ended up falling off and making a play on Cole there."

(4) Johnson was pleased with how the Bears drained the clock on their final drive.

Trailing 28-21, the offense took over at its own 26 with 3:32 to play. After Williams completed passes of 27 yards to Luther Burden III and 24 yards to Devin Duvernay to the Green Bay 23 with 2:00 left, Johnson called three straight runs, setting up the fourth-and-1 play with :27 to goand two timeouts still in his pocket.

"I thought that was actually really well done by the whole team right there on that one," Johnson said. "You get the ball back with 3:30 and you've got to make a decision: Do we go as fast as we can, and if we stall out, we get another possession potentially? Or do we go ahead and let this one be the last one? And we went with the latter. I felt really good about that. I feel really good about how we moved the ball down the field, felt really good about our execution throughout, minus the third-and-1 and the fourth-and-1 there at the very end.

"With a quarterback playing as well as Jordan Love was playing in that gamethey had eight possessions and four touchdowns and he was finding receivers down the field and explosives and all thatthe last thing we wanted to do well, the first thing we needed to do was score a touchdown. But the last thing we wanted to do as well was give them enough time to respond because of how dangerous they had been on offense. Best-case scenario would have been scoring a touchdown with under 30 seconds there and then letting our defense go out and hold down the fort there for the very end to win the game. But we didn't make enough plays there on that last drive to earn that right."

(5) Johnson was surprised that Moore had just one catch in the game, especially with fellow receiver Rome Odunze inactive due to a foot injury.

"He ran some pretty good routes over the course of the day, and we just couldn't give him the ball," Johnson said. "That was not the intent. Going into the game, we might have had more for him than any other player in the offense. Was a little surprised at the end when I saw the stat sheet for one catch like he had."

On the Bears' first possession of the game, Williams targeted Moore down the middle on third-and-15, but they were unable to connect.

"That was disappointing on that particular play," Johnson said. "Was good with the decision, we just left it a little bit high there early in the game.

"Something that I've kind of talked about over the last few weeks with Caleb is, man, how can I best serve him to get him in a rhythm early in games to where we can have some strong starts to the first half? When you're asking your first completion to be an 18-yard dagger route, that's not always the easiest thing, particularly in those elements on the road like that. [It's] something that he's certainly capable of doing. He makes that throw all the time in practice, and yet we weren't able to do it there yesterday that early in the game."