Dennis Allen lived up to his high reputation with promising defensive performance against the Rams, showing he’s the right man for the job
The Chicago Bears defense pitched a strong outing against Matthew Stafford and the Los Angeles Rams.
Chicago Bears defensive coordinator Dennis Allen got a lot of hate going into the playoffs for the way the final two games of the regular season went defensively.
I’ll be the first to say that the Bears had an obvious concern on that side of the ball going into the postseason with little room for improvement. All of those concerns seemingly were justified when the Green Bay Packers jumped out to a 21-3 lead over the Bears in the wild card round.
And yet, Allen made the necessary adjustments to help win that game and pitched an even stronger outing on Sunday night against the top offense left in the playoffs.
Bears’ defensive performance vs. Rams helped build confidence in what Dennis Allen is doing
Going into this game, the Bears knew they were in for a challenge against this entire offense and quarterback Matthew Stafford in particular. There’s little you can do to fool such an experienced playoff veteran but Allen certainly knocked Stafford off his game.
“Our defense played their tails off, they did.” Bears head coach Ben Johnson told reporters after the game. “I thought they did a great job. That’s the number one offense in football, both yards and points. I thought Dennis and the defensive coaching staff, they had a great plan. [The Rams] have weapons all over the place but also that running game is very efficient and it can wear on you. They pose a lot of problems and yet our guys did a nice job taking the plan and bringing it to life.”
Overall, Chicago allowed just 20 points against that offense with both touchdowns coming on runs inside the five-yard-line and held the Rams to 5-16 on third down.
A big reason why is because of the plan Allen put in place coming into this game, and he certainly took advantage of having the healthiest unit he’s had all season. To me, the real standouts were Kyler Gordon and Jaquan Brisker, two players Allen envisioned as chess pieces coming into the year.
Brisker led the team with 14 tackles with two pass deflections. Both he and Gordon also hit home on sacks off designed blitzes that caught Stafford off-guard.
That’s the kind of defense we expected to see all season long from Allen and he certainly lived up to his reputation as a top defensive play caller in that game. Although, he did have one call I was very against in overtime, but there’s plenty of blame to go around for the way that game ended.
Offseason plan is clear to give Dennis Allen his guys to build with on defense
Allen made it clear with his gameplan in that game that he is absolutely the right man for the job leading Chicago’s defense and he shouldn’t be going anywhere, and I don’t even believe that was even a consideration by anyone inside the building based on everything Johnson said about Allen.
“I think there’s a trust level, and that’s earned over time,” Allen said earlier in the year. “I don’t know that it was necessarily that way from the beginning and yet I think my résumé would say that there’s a little bit of a trust level kind of going into it. But I’m appreciative of the fact that he’s given me an opportunity to really step in and do the things that I think we need to do to be successful defensively.”
Now, it’s time for Johnson and the Bears front office to fully show trust in Allen by giving him an overhaul with the guys he needs to run the scheme he’s wanting to run.
Last offseason was about rebuilding the offense for Johnson, this offseason needs to be about retooling the defense for Allen to really see what he can build with this unit.
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