Ahead of Sunday’s matchup with the Baltimore Ravens, Chicago Bears coach Ben Johnson made it clear what his team needed to do to earn its fifth straight win: eliminate penalties — especially pre-snap mistakes — and finish offensive droves with touchdowns instead of field goals.

Instead, the complete opposite happened, The Bears were plagued with costly penalties, red-zone failures, and a lack of takeaways led to a 30-16 loss, as the Bears fall to 4-3 on the season.

Chicago received the ball to start the game and was headed down the field looking to open the game with a touchdown — an emphasis Johnson placed on the team needing to do more and eliminate as many field goals.

It was a 13-play, 8-minute, 5-second drive, but the first eight moved Chicago inside the Baltimore 10 and were executed smoothly. The next five plays took a turn for the worse; everything that plagued Chicago in the red zone this season did so again.

Colston Loveland was called for a fall — start making 3rd and 1, then a more difficult 3rd and 5. After picking up the first down, a negative run play, and a nine-yard sack on Caleb Williams, Chicago settled for a field goal.

In the following Bears possessions, Williams and the offense got to the Ravens 22-yard line, and once again the drive stalled, ending in a 39-yard Cairo Santos field goal.

Two trips into Baltimore territory ended with six points instead of the potential 14, and left the door open for the Ravens.

“You see flashes of some explosive plays and some really good things happening, but the penalties to me is what stand out first and foremost,” Johnson said. We still have pre-snap issues — there is occasional not getting lined up right, there is occasional not getting the motion quite right, and so that stuff adds up, and it hurts us. We get away with it occasionally, but it’s just not the way you win in this league.”

The Bears added 11 more penalties on Sunday in the loss for 79 yards, putting the total to 64 penalties for 533 yards, and an average of 9.1 penalties a game, the second most in the league.

Chicago’s net yards on penalties this season are -279 yards, the most in the league by a wide margin.

“I really put it on the leaders in the locker room to get this ship going in the right direction in that regard,” Johnson said. “Us coaches, we’ve been pounding that drum now for a while, and we haven’t gotten the results we wanted, so it’s on the leaders on this team here to get us right.”

Not only did penalties bring setbacks for the Bears, along with offensive execution in the red zone, but so did the defense.

Chicago faced the hard truth on Sunday when the defense didn’t get takeaways. Down a number of defensive players, Chicago has lived on their ability to take the ball away.

In the four wins this season, the Bears have 15 takeaways and have held their opponents to 19.0 points per game. In three losses, Chicago has just one takeaway and has allowed an average of 36.3 points per game.

Finding consistency is the key for Chicago on both sides of the ball. A stretch of four games with a favorable schedule will either make or break the Bears’ season.

“We have to play a cleaner game, compliment each other better,” Johnson said. “We are on a mission here this week to get this all cleaned up, and I have complete confidence that we will do that.”