Ben Johnson and the Bears’ offense sent a strong message to the rest of the NFC while still showing a far from finished product
It was old-school football at its finest against the Eagles.
All of the talk surrounding the 8-3 Chicago Bears entering Week 13 centered around the team’s strength of schedule the first 11 games and how the team kept games close against teams perceived to be subpar.
On Black Friday against the defending Super Bowl champs on the road, the Bears were finally given an opportunity to send a message one way or another and this team knew what was at stake.
The right message was firmly sent by head coach Ben Johnson and the Bears’ offense to the rest of the league. This team is legit and the scary part is, this team STILL hasn’t played their best football.
Bears’ offense steamroll the Eagles but there’s still a clear area to fix moving forward
It was textbook old-school football by this Ben Johnson offense that finished the game with 281 rushing yards, 28 first downs, with over 39 minutes of possession. Two running backs in D’Andre Swift and Kyle Monangai EACH totaled over 100 yards rushing with a touchdown.
The Bears, against the most physical defensive line in football, out-muscled the Eagles in route to a 24-15 win, easily the team’s biggest victory of the season.
Looking at the passing game quarterback Caleb Williams finished 17/36 passing for 154 yards, one touchdown, and one interception. Not by any means a standout performance from QB1 but not all of the blame should fall on his shoulders.
Williams, multiple times, had a throw on the money only for his wide receivers to slip before the ball arrived to the right spot and his one interception came on a tipped running back screen.
Williams himself, though, had some pretty off-target throws including one that should have been an easy touchdown to wide receiver Rome Odunze. Instead, Williams was slightly off balance with his feet and couldn’t get enough on the football to get it to his target. That part of it has been a consistent struggle for Williams and something the coaches have been working on all year long.
But, similar to last week, Williams hit some big throws late in the game, including the dagger touchdown to tight end Cole Kmet while rolling to his left off the play-action.
At times, the Bears see improvement in Williams’ eyes and footwork but then there’s some plays similar to that one that keep on showing up every week at the wrong time.
“You go back at the tape every week and there are plays where you’re like, ‘Man, this is what it looks like. This is what we want all the time.’ And then there are still plays where you’re like, ‘OK, this isn’t what we want. This is how we want it.’ And he’s very receptive to that,” offensive coordinator Declan Doyle said on Tuesday. “That’s been awesome. It’s been great to work with him. He’s a guy who’s very hungry for growth, he’s very hungry to hear feedback and he wants to improve.”
As great as the Bears were, this game could’ve easily been a blowout with the way the defense played early in this game and the way the offense dominated at the line of scrimmage, but the passing game just couldn’t hit that final haymaker.
Good news is, the Bears improved to 9-3 but the coaching points for Williams need to be seriously addressed because once that part of his game improves, it’s going to be hard to see any team keeping up with Chicago the way this team looked on Friday.
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