Caleb Williams struggled to find the right words as he stood behind a lectern inside the bowels of Soldier Field on Sunday night. Williams stood there, looked down and searched for a way to describe what had just happened.

The Chicago Bears had just ended the regular season on a sour note. Yes, the Bears had secured themselves the NFC’s No. 2 seed for the upcoming playoffs. But they didn’t do it on their own terms.

Chicago came out flat in its regular-season finale against the Detroit Lions. All sides of the ball failed to live up to the moment and the Bears didn’t play well enough to earn the No. 2 seed because of a win. Instead, Chicago lost 19-16 on a 42-yard field goal as time expired and relied on a Washington Commanders win over the Philadelphia Eagles to secure the spot.

So when a reporter asked Williams about the aggravation he felt about the loss, Williams took a few moments before he finally found what to say.

“It’s aggravating,” Williams said after the game inside Soldier Field. “It’s frustrating. The good thing about it is we’re going into the playoffs here, and we’ve got to find ways to get better. The focus has to level up. The urgency has to level up. The play has to level up. The mindset, mentality on the field has to level up because that’s what playoff football is.”

Everything will have to level up from a performance that raised more questions than answers heading into the playoffs.

The offense looked completely different from the one that put up 38 points and was a play away from beating the San Francisco 49ers in a shootout the previous week. The Lions held the Bears offense scoreless through the first three quarters as it punted three times, turned the ball over on downs while Williams also threw an interception.

Chicago had 139 total yards of offense over three quarters and the offense couldn’t gain momentum. Bears head coach Ben Johnson said he didn’t hold back on his play calling ahead of the playoffs. The execution wasn’t there.

“I didn’t feel like it was one of our more elaborate plans,” Johnson said. “I felt it was one of our simpler plans. We need to do a better job of executing it and coaching it up.”

Like they had throughout the season, the Bears didn’t give up.

Williams hit wide receiver Jahdae Walker for a 25-yard touchdown and converted a 2-point conversion to chip at the Lions’ 16-8 lead near the start of the fourth quarter. He then found rookie tight end Colston Loveland for a 1-yard touchdown to tie the game 16-16 with 5:25 left in the game, hinting at another memorable comeback win.

But this time, the Bears’ heroics didn’t have a happy ending. The defense gave the offense the ball at the Bears 26 yard line with 2:11 left in the game after Kevin Byard intercepted his seventh pass of the season. The offense instead went three-and-out and gave the ball back to the Lions with three time outs left.

“I don’t think we deserve to win the way we played today,” Bears running back D’Andre Swift said. “That’s my initial thoughts. I don’t know. I didn’t like the way we came out at all.”

Chicago’s defense meanwhile continued its tough stretch for a second straight week. After it allowed the 49ers to put up 496 total yards of offense the previous week, the Lions had little trouble moving the ball down the field Sunday.

Detroit finished with 433 total yards of offense, the fourth-most Chicago has allowed this season. Although the Bears defense did a good job of limiting the damage in the red zone, the Lions dominated the time of possession, holding on to the ball for 35:45 compared to 24:15.

The Bears had a chance to make a stop when the Lions took over at their own 37 with 1:41 left in the game. Instead, Detroit picked up a couple first downs, drained game clock and moved the ball down into field goal range for the game-winning kick.

“At the end of the day, we’ve got to all look ourselves in the mirror and just play how we’ve been playing all year,” safety Jaquan Brisker said. “We’re one of the top defenses in the league, take the ball away, things like that. So that’s what we’ve got to do.”

The Bears were quick to turn the page despite the loss. As Johnson liked to say after the game, Chicago is entering a new season and will need to go on another four-game winning streak to win the Super Bowl.

That road will start on Saturday at 7 p.m. when the Bears host the Green Bay Packers at Soldier Field in the Wild Card round. It will be the third time in five week the Bears will play the Packers.

“It’s aggravating. It’s frustrating. The good thing about it is we’re going into the playoffs here, and we’ve got to find ways to get better. The focus has to level up. The urgency has to level up. The play has to level up. The mindset, mentality on the field has to level up because that’s what playoff football is.”

—  Caleb Williams, Chicago Bears quarterback

When the Bears do start that journey, Williams hoped they had learned from Sunday night. The loss didn’t cost them anything. But he believed that frustration could turn into something beneficial over the next month.

“Use this frustration having two back-to-back losses,” Williams said. “But use this frustration and then find a way to get better. Find a way to put us, it doesn’t matter if we win the game by one next week or whatever the case may be. Find a way to give us and ourselves an advantage to win the game and do that.”