Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Dan Wiederer talks Bears' loss & Tyson Bagent's chance to shine

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

Leila Rahimi and Mark Grote were joined by Dan Wiederer of The Athletic to break down the Bears' 9-3 loss to the Vikings on Sunday. Wiederer also discussed Bears backup quarterback Tyson Bagent's opportunity to shine with starter Caleb Williams suffering from a hamstring injury.

This hour is being brought to you by Cars for Kids. Dan Weiderer, Bears reporter and senior writer for the athletic. You're going to be relying on a lot of young players, guys that have to materialize into who they thought they were. The Bears are who we thought they were. On their contributor for 1043, the score. We'll mention this mainly because Dan Weirer said we would mention this nugget. Host of the Take the North podcast. We're going to take the North and never give it back.

Dan Weeder. Thanks, Coach. We'll go first to Dan Weedier. on Chicago Sports Radio 1043, The Score. Weedman. It's Rahimi and Grotie on 1043, The Score. So you're listening to a Plummers 9-1-1 football Monday

presented by Busey Bank and great clips. Talk to Weeter here in just a second, but just to let everybody know if you're just getting in your cars and you're like, what's the Caleb Williams update from the injury yesterday? According to Tom Pellisero, the Bears quarterback Caleb Williams avoided any major injury to his hamstring Sunday.

Test confirmed today. and the team isn't even ruling him out for Monday's game against the Eagles. Sources telling The Ringer and Netflix and Ben Johnson, also on the flagship, saying that he's week to week. And I do believe Ben will discuss with the media masses later on this afternoon. So that's where things stand, as we do invite in the senior writer at the athletic, Dan Weider, covering the Chicago Bears. How do you feel about getting that news, Dan, relative to the way we were feeling yesterday

when we were recording to take the North podcast? Yeah, Grotty, obviously very encouraging that the quarterback's long-term status is in a good state. And we'll get more, I think, at 3 o'clock over Zoom from Ben Johnson. We need to get a little more clarification on one of the things he said to Jeff Joniak this morning, which is that he expects Caleb to miss some time, even with the week-to-week status. And so we'll get an idea of what that means for the very, very short term, which is obviously week three against the Eagles a week from today. All right.

So then we have to ask you about this because we said we would. Do you believe in a Madden curse? Oh, boy. I do not, no. I took one for the team, okay? I told you that was going to be the answer. We still have to ask you what your answer is. Like, we can't speak for you.

That's awesome. I do not. Moving on. Do you believe in any curses? No. Once upon a time, maybe that Billy goat might have been in the back of my head for a little while. Practical. Newspaper man.

I was at the Bartman game. So, like, you can't. can't leave that not scarred and thinking about what forces are at work in the universe we were all cured in 2026 all right i have to share this then so dan as dan and i are walking it's a hard day for us mentally we were walking out of soldier field last night uh leaving the press box late after the gap after working the locker room and then doing our jobs and then recording the podcast we walked out of there fairly late last night and dan said some to me which i think you've actually said to me before believe or not as i thought about this dan said you know why can't the best you know why can't the

Bears just ever have a normal game? When was the last time there was just a normal game played by the Bears? And I think we've had similar conversations as you and I have walked out of that building. You want to follow up on that, Dan? And why can't they just have normal games ever since about halfway through last year? Yeah. You know, like we used to have the conversation of just lose normal, right? Like it didn't have to be this spectacular dumpster fire with the way that they lose.

I think, you know, these first two weeks of the season have reminded us of the intrigue of the NFL where you're on top of the world one week. You're scoring 59 points. You're in a game that's got more than a thousand total yards between both teams. Then the next week, nobody visits the end zone. There wasn't a single touchdown scored Sunday at Soldier Field. And it's, you know, it's just we get these reminders all the time. But it's just a very emphatic reminder that just understand that the previous week almost never means anything to the next week. And so I think that was driven home loud and clear Sunday,

given where we were coming out of Carolina, and then obviously what happened in that very dispiriting loss. It's not just the Caleb Williams injury, everything that happened before and after that leaves the bears with a really bad taste in their mouth because they didn't play well. I understand why coaches want to communicate that with the team. But there's also tape to teach off of, and it was clear that the Vikings used that in week one

to anticipate what they were going to see in week two. So I get frustrated because there was the part of the media diligently and appropriately asking the bears last week about what worked to them. And that's a valid answer. I don't care if it's the Panthers or the Vikings. And perhaps, Dan, their separation of the two weeks and the two opponents caused some folly because we didn't see them run the ball enough like they did against Carolina. Well, listen, they tried. Go look at the first half. They tried to run the football.

They didn't do it well. And so there's a lot to go back into this film and watch and try to figure out why were the struggles as pronounced as they were early on. The Vikings do a lot of movement up front with their defensive line. It felt like the Bears were playing a little bit slower and perhaps because they were thinking a lot about how they were going to react and adjust to the things that the Vikings and Brian Flores threw at them. But they just couldn't get the running game going yesterday. Their longest play of the first half is a 17-yard Caleb Williams run on a fumbled snap, right? Like that was the kind of first half it was. And it was just really, really ugly to watch.

There's a lot of missed opportunities in there. We all know what happened in that sequence where they had all those penalties back to back to back. I had forgotten that that started after a completion to Colston Lovelland down to the Minnesota 16. And within a matter of a couple breaths, they're back run in place from their side of midfield. Like that can't happen. That sequence of four consecutive penalties there in such a short period killed them in a game where, again, you were inside the red zone. That doesn't count as a red zone trip because that play was negated. by the first of the four penalties.

But 0 for 3 inside the red zone yesterday, including twice where they didn't score at all, that's a big problem and something that will obviously get addressed this week. Yeah, this segment with Dan Wheater, sponsored by Busey Bank, building business, growing well since 1868. It's Rahimi and Grody on 104. 104 of the score. I mean, how do you explain what has been going on with Garrett Bradbury at Center? Didn't have a great game in the opener? And then the four penalties in this one.

How do you explain it? Dan. Well, you talked to him after the game, Grotie, and I think he gave you the appropriate answer. It's inexcusable. There are no excuses for it. You've got to be better. I think that was our first glimpse into the understanding that Grant Bradbury is not going to be Drew Dalman. And so this, we knew coming into the season was going to be a bit of a step back in terms of what you could expect out of the center position. I don't think anyone expected it to be as rocky as things got Sunday. I think part of the job of this coaching staff and Ben Johnson at the head of things is to try to separate what caused legitimate concern for the entire offense yesterday and what were things

that were very matchup specific or weather related, right? And so that's part of the filtering process today is to figure out, okay, what in here was just a mess that we've got to get cleaned up? And what can we just discard because it just felt like a one-off either due to what we were facing from the Vikings or because the conditions were what they were someday. I also want to ask you, too, because you had the Vikings beat right around for the athletic on take the North, talking about that very thing, that Brian Flores was going to attack the center position, who's going to be aggressive in that center of the line. I feel like we saw that pretty early on. You know, you mentioned that disastrous sequence for the drive that really was their longest one at that point of that

quarter. How did you see that taking shape and what were your takeaways from that conversation after you both watched the game on Sunday? Yeah. I mean, again, it's just you've got to find reliability from that position, particularly in a week like that where so much is on the center to try to be steadying force up front. And when you're not a steadying force and then you compound it by just making a flurry of mistakes, it's a problem. And so, um, that's, it's something that they've got to look long and hard at. And there's going to be a lot of stuff within this, this game video that makes them ask serious questions. I think this team under Ben's watch has been really, really good at looking in the mirror and being honest about what is showing them. And they'll have to get back

to work this week trying to, trying to shore some of that up. Vic Fangio's next on the dial. It's not like you get a breath in week three. You're going into a prime time showdown potentially and probably likely with a backup quarterback against one of the best defensive coordinators to ever do it. So get ready, you know, figure out the fixes quickly. And yes, you do get an extra day of preparation here this week, but you better be very, very urgent in the correction process. Right.

We knew what the formula was last year against the Eagles. We'll see if Vic Fangio allow us for that. There will be some readjusting, I would imagine, from Philly's defense. watching the film of that game. And that leads me into Tyson Bajant, Dan. I mean, you've talked to him plenty in the locker. We wrote a great piece about him. In The Athletic, we had him on at Hyundai at Gurney Hyundai on Take the North.

This is his moment now. Like if he is to play, and again, we don't know for sure if, like, if Caleb is going to be out at this point. But I'm guessing we will see some Tyson Bajent. This is his opportunity. How do you feel based on really? more talk from Tyson Bayesian than action on the field with him as your backup quarterback. Well, I'll take this down two roads here because I think there's some very interesting psychological dynamics at place here. The first one I'll start out with is the pressure

that Tyson faces this week. This team has expectations. This isn't an undrafted rookie in the second month of his first regular season taken over for an injured quarterback for a team that was trying to figure out what it was. This is a, you know, a fourth year guy with a chance to rewrite the next chapter of his career, right, to set himself up for bigger opportunities down the road by playing well. Tyson can't get sucked into thinking at all at any point during the next eight days about the big picture significance of what he's doing. He has to focus on every day's preparation and every single snap of every drive that he's in.

If he can maintain that very little picture focus with all this big picture pressure surrounding him, I think they'll be in good shape. I think the other part of this Grotie is you feel from the guys in the locker room that there's trust, right? Like you heard it yesterday from a handful of guys in that Bears locker room. They know the way Tyson prepares. They know the connection he has with Ben Johnson. They feel like they are in good hands.

He's not expected to be the second coming of Superman. He's not going to be Caleb Williams. It's not going to be the same brand of football that you see offensively. But they feel like he can be steady in that position. And so now collectively you've got to go to work setting him up for success. And this will be an opportunity for Ben to try to figure out what that formula is. with the QB2. And that's not something that he's been used to because he's been overseeing some very, very durable quarterbacks in Jared Goff and Caleb Williams.

And Dan, I talked to Mark about this a little bit earlier on our show. What we typically see for Tyson Bayesian is a playbook that I think really could have been utilized throughout the entire game yesterday. Rollouts, moving the pocket, a little bit more moving early, you know, for the quarterback, some maybe a designed run or two. I don't know if he's doing that necessarily. But the point is things that compensated for, I think, base and Bayjant's lack of big, big arm strength, you know, and I wonder if that could have been utilized for Caleb Williams yesterday against Minnesota. Well, look, we can go back through yesterday's offensive video and just find a ton of

places where things got clunky. And then again, the scoring opportunities in close have to be seized on. We're having an entire week's worth of different conversation if DeAndre Swift scores, if Caleb Williams doesn't slip and strain his hamstring. if they make a field goal, perhaps, after Caleb strains his hamstring. And so, like, there was just so many opportunities where they could have changed the direction of the conversation for this week. And they didn't with Tyson and how you kind of game plan for them. Obviously, the preseason is the preseason, and you're not seeing much exotic from opposing defenses.

But go back through that Tennessee video from the last game of the preseason in August. And you understand what he's capable of, of just getting back there and operating and dissecting a defense and putting the ball where it needs to go quickly. that's the way they're going to succeed here is with him getting rid of the ball quickly. Ben's going to get the primary open more often than not. The ball's got to go there. Those guys got to go to work once they have the ball. And you can have success.

You're not going to have the same level of extended play brilliance that Caleb gives you. You're not going to have the same danger with Tyson as a runner. The fourth quarter resume is obviously much, much, much smaller than Caleb is put together. So those are deficiencies and weaknesses that Tyson's not going to bring to the table. But you can win with them and you can be successful with them offensively. And now it's just a group effort to find that for me. Four career starts all in 2023 for Tyson Bayesian. He has played in 13 games as we talked to Dan Weider, senior writer at The Athletic,

covering the Bears co-host of the Take the North podcast. And Dan is joining us on our video stream to watch, search the score of Chicago on Twitch and YouTube. It's Rahimi and Grody. And Dan, what stood out to you about the Bears defense yesterday? Well, this may surprise you, but I'm going to go to their side of the ball with the missed opportunities there as well. And there's two of them.

They played really well. And listen, you and I agreed last night, great bounce back effort, given what it looked like in Charlotte. But you've got a play early in the game where Devin Bush has an interception in his hands and he doesn't secure the catch. This is a defense that's going to have to rely on takeaways because they're not going to get enough game-changing plays with their pass rush to make life difficult on opponents.

So when you get opportunities, you got to seize on those. That was a missed opportunity there. then Caleb gets hurt, the field goal gets blocked, you've still got an opportunity with Minnesota deep in their own territory to get the football back with plenty of time to go to work, and they gave up an 11 play, 67-yard, 5-minute and 12-second field goal drive that gave the Vikings a more comfortable cushion, forced the bears to use all three of their timeouts,

and now all of a sudden you get the ball back with a minute left and having to go to work in a totally different headspace than you would have had you got it back at like, say, midfield with three and a half minutes to go. And so the very first third down on that series, third and five, that they weren't able to get off the field. That's a killer. And so I would expect Dennis Allen to bring that to his guy's attention today, tomorrow, Wednesday. Obviously, he'll be done talking about it by Friday when we get him at the podium.

But certainly with everything there is to be encouraged about, you have to go again, look in the mirror and see, hey, we had a couple opportunities here to go ahead and squeeze a win out of an ugly day. And we didn't get done on our side of the ball either. And so that's where we are at one-in-one. and obviously the Vikings undefeated at the top of the division now. Dan, what do you think about the obvious out-of-bounds hit that Cleve Graemean took and how I do think that affected that ensuing drive. And I wonder if it would have been remarkably different for the bears had that been called like it should have been.

Absurd. I mean, honestly, absurd. It was so obvious in real time without any looking up at a video board. I know that after it occurred and there's an extended break in the action. there and Caleb is standing outside the Bears huddle pointing up at the video board above the north end zone and Soldier Field to the official saying like you cannot miss a call like that. Our punt return has got both feet out of bounds before the guy even launches to hit him and he hits them and you don't get the 15 yards there. And it does. It impacts the game. You got to move on. You've got to figure out a way to score on that drive when you have the ball and you're on the move.

They were in the move there and you could feel the energy building inside Soldier Field. But yeah, to your point, Lela, it's just a blown call. And it just can't happen because, again, those types of things can be result changing, which can then be season changing if you're not careful. Yeah, and Dan, promising on the defense, you know, one thing is easy to take for granted because there's so much chaos in these games. But both Malik Mohamed and Dylan Thienman continue. Like, I don't know if we're at the point where they're like, they're legit, they're good.

They seem to know what they're doing, both of those guys, and both of them made plays yesterday. They play fast, right? And as a rookie, that's one of the instructions. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to screw up. There's going to be things you've never seen before. But play fast. You know, obviously we see the Muhammad sack coming off the edge.

Very, very, very good burst there to get in on Carson Wentz there. And then the play that the Neman made, he seemed to be really fired up afterwards, almost like realizing in the moment, like, I just knocked the ball loose from Justin Jefferson on a potential touchdown catch. Like, that feels good as a rookie to get those types of moments early in your career. certainly, certainly promising to see some of those flashes. You want to see them every week, and then over time you want to see that become consistency.

Our segment with Dan Weeder is brought to you by Plumbers 911. Plumbing Emergency, call the plumbing professionals available 24-7 at 1833 Plum 911. Dan, thanks again for being on today. And thank you for entertaining the question about the curse. He didn't entertain anything. No, he did. He answered. We said we were going to answer.

I was just going to chime in with this really quick. Like, days like today on social media, this is when social media is at its dumbest. And I say that in the best ways and the worst way it's like the best ways are some of these, some of these Caleb Williams memes that like obviously the sensitivity of the situation is real. But people have been pretty funny with this and like it's genuinely funny. And then I got to tell everybody out there that owns a Twitter account, I don't need to know about your personal experience with a strain hamstring at any point in your life. It's not going to help me this week.

You don't need to share it. It's not related to what Caleb's doing this week. So thank you for chiming in, but we don't need it. Oh, you're hilarious. I can't wait until you have to also address the discourse around his emotion now about how he felt about leaving the game. That's the level I refuse to address. It's all coven background.

We will get there with him in due time. Yeah, yeah. It's so silly. We will. Dan, appreciate your time, man. We'll talk to you. I'll talk to you a little bit later on. I think we're recording a podcast.

later on this afternoon. I'll look forward to that. Let's get right back at. That's right. We just keep trying. We'll do it again until we get this thing right. That's the way it is. Dan, thank you, man.

Yep. There goes Dan Weiderer. Follow him on X, if you would like. At Dan Weiderer. Do you want to know how to spell his name? It's a tricky one. W-I-E-D-E-R-E-R. I before E except after C.

That's right. And also in my name. He is Weidman. Yeah. Let's pick up kind of where he was talking about leaving off with the Tyson-Bajun portion of the interview anyway. How confident are you that Tyson-Bajun will be able to hold things together in Caleb Williams' absence? We will explore all things Tyson-Bajan Nectin. If we have any kind of updates on Caleb Williams, we will bring those to you as well right here on Rahimi and Grotie on 104-3, the score.

I love Tyson.