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Four people were killed and two teens were among 23 wounded in citywide shootings since this weekend. | Sun-Times file photo

Two of those who died were shot on Belmont Avenue in Avondale.

Six people were killed and 22 others were wounded by gunfire over the weekend in attacks across Chicago.

Two men were shot and killed early Saturday in Avondale on the Northwest Side. The two men, 28 and 26, were shot shot minutes after midnight in the 2700 block of West Belmont Avenue, Chicago police said. Both were taken to Illinois Masonic Medical Center and pronounced dead. Their names haven’t been released.
A man was killed in Austin on the West Side Saturday afternoon. The 26-year-old was in a car in the 900 block of South Monitor Avenue when he was stuck by gunfire, police said. The unidentified man was shot in the neck and taken to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, where he was pronounced dead.
A man was killed and another wounded in a drive-by Sunday morning in West Garfield Park. About 7 a.m., they were standing in the 400 block of South Kostner Avenue when a white car pulled up and someone inside started firing shots, police said. Keith Melton-McKinney, 56, was struck in his head and shoulder, authorities said. He died at Mount Sinai Hospital. The second man, 39, was struck twice in the shoulder and stabilized at Loretto Hospital.
A man was killed Sunday morning in Ukrainian Village. A man, about 30 years old, was found on the ground around 1 a.m. with a gunshot wound to the torso in the 900 block of North Damen Avenue, police said. He was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he died, police said. His name hasn’t been released.
Sunday morning, a woman was fatally shot in Gresham on the South Side. Kailah Bledsoe, 22, was shot by a woman who walked up to her around 10:30 a.m. in the 7600 block of South Morgan Street, police said. Bledsoe was struck in the face and taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead. No arrest was made.

Nonfatal attacks

A 15-year-old boy was shot Saturday afternoon in Gresham on the South Side. About 3:45 p.m., the 15-year-old was near an alley in the 7900 block of South Justine Street when he was shot in the chest, police said. The teen was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in serious condition, police said.
A 16-year-old boy was shot while waiting for a friend Friday night on the Near West Side. The teen was standing outside about 7:30 p.m. in the 300 block of South Western Avenue when someone in the back seat of a black Kia fired shots, police said. He was struck in the thigh and taken to Illinois Masonic Medical Center in good condition, police said.
A man was shot in his living room Sunday morning in Chicago Lawn on the South Side. The attack happened around 1:15 a.m. in the 6100 block of South Campbell Avenue. The 22-year-old was was shot in the shoulder and grazed in his head, police said. He was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in fair condition, police said.

At least 18 others were wounded in shootings in Chicago this weekend.

Last weekend, three people were killed and 26 others wounded in shootings in Chicago.

Read more on crime, and track the city’s homicides.

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A day after dropping to 3-5 on the season, the Chicago Bears now face a harsh reality: they really aren’t that good. This season was never supposed to end in a Super Bowl by any means, but seeing the team play competitive football is the goal at this point. Hampered by a clueless head coach […] Chicago Bears should begin fire sale by trading these 5 players – Da Windy City – Da Windy City – A Chicago Sports Site – Bears, Bulls, Cubs, White Sox, Blackhawks, Fighting Illini & MoreRead More

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These five lofts showcase raw, flowing open floor plans that give their tenants ample flexibility.Read More

Khalil Herbert had 20 carries for 68 yards before the injury. | David Banks/AP

Herbert took a knee to the head and was down for a few minutes before heading to the locker room. Damien Williams, however, hurt his knee and was out for the game. Plus, a look at the pass-rush slump, third-down success and Allen Robinson’s quiet season.

The Bears better hope they have more untapped talent at running back, because their depth chart is running thin again.

Already without starter David Montgomery because of a knee injury, the Bears lost Damien Williams and Khalil Herbert during their 33-22 loss to the 49ers. Herbert was cleared to return after taking a knee to the head, but Williams was out for the game with a knee injury.

For a spell before Herbert came back, Ryan Nall was the only available running back.

Herbert finished with 72 yards on 23 carries and has averaged 86 per game while Montgomery has been out.

“I’m feeling good, a little sore,” Herbert said. “Tough loss, tough loss, but we’ve just gotta regroup.”

Montgomery went on injured reserve in Week 5 with a sprained knee and is eligible to return to practice anytime. If he doesn’t play against the Steelers next week, he would have an extra week to recover before the Bears’ ensuing game against the Ravens on Nov 21.

The Bears also have Artavis Pierce and Chris Thompson on their practice squad. Tarik Cohen has been on the Physically Unable to Perform list all season, and the team has given no timetable on his return.

Pass rush slump

This was the second consecutive game in which the Bears didn’t have a sack. They hadn’t been shut out twice in a row since 2017.

The upside is that the team did not put star outside linebacker Khalil Mack on injured reserve Saturday, which had been under consideration. Mack has been playing through a sprained foot since the Week 3 game against the Browns and has barely practiced.

If the Bears had opted for IR, Mack would’ve been out until at least the Thanksgiving game against the Lions.

Without him, the Bears relied on Robert Quinn to lead the pass rush. But the key to the defense leading the NFL in sacks through the first seven games was that offenses were forced to deal with Mack and Quinn simultaneously, unlike the last few seasons when Mack faced constant double- and triple-teams.

Robinson quiet again

Allen Robinson, the Bears’ top wide receiver each of the last three seasons, was targeted four times and had three catches for 21 yards. With 26 catches for 271 yards and a touchdown, he is on pace for his worst statistical performance since his rookie season.

Robinson was targeted 11 times in the season opener, but has averaged 4.7 passes per game since. The Bears targeted him 8.9 times per game from 2018 through ’20.

Second-year receiver Darnell Mooney leads the Bears with 53 targets, 33 catches and 409 yards. Robinson is second with 44 targets.

Robinson is playing on the franchise tag this season and will be an unrestricted free agent in March.

Third-down success

The Bears had their best third-down performance of the season, converting 8 of 15 and cleaning up one failed attempt with Justin Fields‘ 22-yard touchdown run on fourth-and-one with 9:32 left. They were near the bottom of the NFL with a 31% success rate through seven games.

It was just the sixth time under coach Matt Nagy that they converted more than half of the third downs.

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Deebo Samuel’s 50-yard catch against Kindle Vildor shortly before halftime led to a 49ers field goal. | AP Photos

The 49ers are a middling offense, but did whatever they wanted against the Bears’ supposedly elite defense

On the Bears’ last stand Sunday, with the game and perhaps their season at stake, the defense crumbled. The 49ers needed to kill the clock, and everyone at Soldier Field knew they were about to run.

And it didn’t matter.

Like everything for the 49ers on Sunday, this was easy. Rookie running back Elijah Mitchell swerved by nearly every Bears defender for 39 yards to set up the game-icing field goal as the Bears fell 33-22 to a team that hadn’t won in more than a month.

Without Khalil Mack and Eddie Jackson, the Bears allowed the 49ers offense to look better than it had all season. They had a scoring opportunity on every possession, failing only when they missed a 48-yard field goal on the opening drive.

“We didn’t get the stops like we needed to — there’s no doubt about that,” said special teams coordinator Chris Tabor, who filled in for coach Matt Nagy. “You can’t argue that fact.

“I’m still gonna jump in a foxhole with all those guys and we’re gonna work to get better. I know that’s big coach-speak, but we’re a team, we’re a family. We’re hurting right now but we gotta bounce back.”

It is coach-speak. And it’s pretty much what Nagy would’ve said.

And it’s meaningless.

If the Bears don’t have a world-class defense, what exactly do they have?

On a day when the offense was upbeat and defensive tackle Akiem Hicks said it was time to “appreciate them for stepping up and putting up points,” the Bears managed 22 points — still below the league-wide average. That only qualifies as a lot if their defense is overwhelming.

It was the opposite. The same way the Bears always enjoy piling up points against the Lions, the 49ers used this game to make everything about their 20th-ranked offense look spectacular.

They set their season high in total yardage at 467, which was the most the Bears have allowed in regulation since 2015. They ran at will, led by Mitchell’s 137 yards — highest against the Bears in nearly two years — and a touchdown on just 18 carries. And Jimmy Garoppolo looked like an all-pro on a day in which the Bears never touched him and couldn’t stay within flailing distance of his receivers.

Garoppolo completed 17 of 28 passes for 322 yards and ran for two touchdowns. With Mack out, the Bears had zero sacks and zero quarterback hits.

For those unfamiliar with Garoppolo’s work, by the way, he’s not a runner and typically goes years between rushing touchdowns. But Sunday, he ran two yards for a score late in the third quarter to bring the 49ers within 16-15 and put them up 30-22 on his five-yard run with 6:34 left.

While the Bears must’ve been surprised by Garoppolo’s wheels, they had to have seen Deebo Samuel coming. He went into the game as one of four players in the NFL averaging more than 100 yards receiving and lit up the Bears for the second-highest total of his career at 171 on six catches.

He had a 50-yarder over the top of cornerback Kindle Vildor with 25 seconds left in the first half that led to a field goal and went 83 yards on a screen pass in the third to set up Garoppolo’s touchdown.

Extraneously, but noteworthy nonetheless, there was a play in between the 83-yarder and Garoppolo’s run when the Bears had just 10 defenders on the field.

The screen pass to Samuel was essentially a surrender by the 49ers on third-and-19, but they thoroughly outplayed the Bears. It was near-perfect blocking, and after Samuel slipped a tackle attempt by defensive lineman Mario Edwards and sprinted up the sideline, it took a desperate lunge by safety DeAndre Houston-Carson to force him out of bounds.

Houston-Carson took over for Jackson after he injured his hamstring on the second play of the game and did not return. Jackson had played every defensive snap this season before getting hurt.

The Bears tried to paint this as an aberration, but they can’t afford those when their offense is averaging 15.4 points per game.

“Ebbs and flows of the season, man,” Hicks said. “You’re gonna have your ups and downs. Sometimes you’re gonna get hit in the face. You just can’t sit on the [losses] too long.”

It’s more than just an inevitable speed bump. It’s the check-engine light. And if the floundering 49ers can hang 30-plus points on the Bears, anybody can.

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Bears special teams coordinator Chris Tabor was in control as the Bears’ acting head coach in place of Matt Nagy on Sunday against the 49ers at Soldier Field. “I was extremely comfortable,” Tabor said. | Nam Y. Huh/AP

Special-teams coordinator Chris Tabor was able to put his “own spin on it” as acting head coach with Nagy in coronavirus protocol. But after a fast start, the Bears were stymied in the second half in a 33-22 loss to the 49ers.

Asked about the Bears having only 10 players on the field before a critical defensive play of the goal line in the third quarter Sunday — 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo scored on the ensuing play — acting head coach Chris Tabor was direct, resolute and succinct. He didn’t have to see the film.

”We did have 10 men on at the time,” Tabor said. ”I knew it was gonna be a tight ballgame. And in the second half, those timeouts are gold bricks to me. Sometimes you’ve gotta weigh where they’re at on the field and roll the dice. I elected to roll the dice.”

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Coach Matt Nagy missed the Bears’ 33-22 loss to the 49ers at Soldier Field because of coronavirus protocols, and Tabor’s tidy, cogent postgame news conference was one of the few times his absence was obvious.

Other than that, it was business as usual for the Bears. A promising start, missed opportunities to take control, a signature play by Justin Fields to provide hope and a defensive collapse in the second half added up to a third consecutive loss that was pretty typical of the Nagy era.

With Nagy unable to communicate with his coaches while watching the game in quarantine at an undisclosed location — per NFL rules — he handed the reins to his special-teams coordinator with authority. Tabor wasn’t just a figurehead and didn’t act like one. He took Nagy’s message to heart.

”Coach and I talked a lot, obviously, throughout the week,” Tabor said. ”He said: ‘You’ll put your spin on it. You’ll know what to do. You’ll have the speed of the game.’

”I will say this: There’s analytics, and you do listen to analytics. But at the end of the day, there’s a gut feeling. You’re going down a river and you have to figure out, ‘Are we gonna go right or are we gonna go left?’ There’s a lot of things that go into that that you can’t come up with the answer on Wednesday or Thursday.

”I thought we played in the flow of the game. At the end of the day, it was a tale of two halves.”

For one game, an NFL team can survive on autopilot without its coach. And, as expected, Nagy was and wasn’t missed.

For his part, receiver Darnell Mooney said he noticed Nagy’s absence.

”Definitely,” Mooney said. ”His vocalness and just being able to pick up everybody energy-wise. He definitely was missed, for sure.”

Quarterback Justin Fields said Nagy texted him before the game.

”It was a long message,” Fields said. ”Just know it was inspirational. That’s all you need to know.”

Once the game began, however, Fields was too focused to think about it.

”You can’t really let it impact your day, can’t focus on that,” Fields said of Nagy’s absence. ”He’s not going to help us . . . at home. You have to focus on who’s here and focus on now.

”Of course, it was tough not having Coach. He texted me this morning. I texted him back. He texted me after the game, and I didn’t see what he said yet. But it was pretty much the same thing for me.”

In one way, Nagy couldn’t win Sunday. Even if the Bears’ ever-stagnant offense suddenly blossomed without him, it wouldn’t be a great look. And for what it’s worth, the Bears’ offense was pretty efficient and error-free in the early going.

The Bears scored on their first three possessions for only the second time in Nagy’s four seasons on Fields’ eight-yard touchdown pass to tight end Jesse James and two field goals by Cairo Santos.

And Fields had a breakout game as a runner. He gained 103 yards on 10 carries, including a spectacular 22-yard touchdown run on a fourth-and-one play in the fourth quarter that cut the 49ers’ lead to 23-22 with 9:32 left.

It was Tabor’s call to go for it, even before the third-and-six play that set it up.

”I knew if it was the right down-and-distance, we were gonna go for it, yes,” Tabor said.

In the end, Tabor and the Bears suffered another loss. Business as usual.

”Honestly, the difference was he just wasn’t there in person,” Tabor said. ”But he was in the meetings. I visited Coach last night. I visited with him this morning. I’m disappointed we didn’t get the win for him. That hurts.”

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