One of the Bears’ biggest issues vs. Vikings continued to be the same one HC Ben Johnson tried brushing off going into Week 1
This can’t continue to be an issue.
The Chicago Bears had a major problem going into the season when it came to pre-snap issues leading to drive killing plays.
Head coach Ben Johnson repeatedly called his offense “sloppy” and “disappointing” throughout training camp when the issues continued to show up, but he had a different tone heading into the first game of the regular season.
“I’m confident that we’re going to be just fine moving forward,” Johnson claimed when asked last week about the pre-snap issues.
Turns out, that wasn’t going to be the case and it might need to be something that’s seriously addressed from the coaching staff moving forward.
Bears pre-snap issues on offense and penalties continued to be a major problem vs. Vikings
“We said going into Week 1 that the team that would make the least number of mistakes would win the game,” Johnson told reporters after the loss. “Unfortunately, we were on the wrong side of that.”
Chicago finished the game with 12 penalties for 127 yards. Now, of course, not all of those penalties and yards came from the pre-snap operation, so let’s take a closer look.
Of those 12 penalties in Week 1, four were false starts and one was an illegal shift on the final drive of the game. The offense also added three more penalties on two holding calls (one of which was a botched call) and one intentional grounding.
In the eyes of the team’s head coach, one penalty is too many to have that can set the offense back and lead to negative yards, and that’s the only way to look at it.
“That’s gotta get cleaned up in a hurry and yet we’ve been saying that all training camp as well,” Johnson added. “We’ll find a way to get that done. It’s going to be a collective effort, no one’s pointing fingers.”
Considering these issues have gone on this long, finding the solution is going to be a lot easier said than done.
“I don’t know if it’ll naturally go away. I think it’s something that takes our direct effort and focus,” center Drew Dalman said last Monday. “It’s certainly something we have worked on and will continue to work on throughout the year. It will never be a finished product.”
While it’ll never be a finished product, it’ll certainly need to be much better than what we saw unfold against the Vikings because it completely stalled the entire team’s momentum after a hot start and it cost the team a win in Week 1.
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