Chicago showed up banged up in specific spots: Gervon Dexter Sr. (hamstring) and Austin Booker (groin) both sat out the trip, and Luther Burden III was still working back from his own groin issue in limited individual drills. Tennessee's health picture wasn't cleaner — linebackers Dominique Hampton and Milo Eifler both landed on injured reserve in the days before kickoff, thinning the second level right as it needed to hold up behind a backup-quarterback offense. None of that stopped the market from installing the Titans as favorites at home.
It didn't hold. Playing in 94-degree heat at Nissan Stadium, Chicago scored in three of the four quarters and never trailed, while Tennessee's offense — without Ward directing it — never found a rhythm behind its own reserves.
The Bears grabbed an early lead and never let go of it, going up 7-3 after the first quarter and 14-9 at the half. A 10-point third quarter blew the game open and put Chicago in control for good; Tennessee's only response the rest of the way was a garbage-time field goal to tighten the final margin to 24-15. For a game built entirely around backups, it was a lopsided, well-defined result from start to finish.
Both clubs came into the weekend on very different tracks. Chicago had alternated wins and losses through its preseason slate, while Tennessee arrived unbeaten, having rallied from a double-digit deficit to beat the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks a week earlier. That form gap made the Titans the trendier side heading in — and made Saturday's result more of a gut check than either side's recent stretch suggested it would be.
The injury boards for both teams tell the story of a roster in triage mode two weeks before the regular season. Chicago is nursing a hamstring, a groin and a linebacker already on IR; Tennessee is down two linebackers to IR of its own and still monitoring a receiver who avoided a concussion scare at a joint practice with the Bears earlier in the week. Cut-down decisions are close behind, and this game was as much about who stays on the 53 as who wins a preseason finale.
With both presumptive Week 1 starting quarterbacks on the sideline in street clothes, the finale always had a ceiling on how much it would actually tell either fan base. What it did confirm: Chicago's backup pieces looked more organized in a live setting than Tennessee's did, on a day neither team's top-line roster was really on the field.