ckparrothead
Premium Member
I looked at the last 5 times the Bears defense allowed teams to score and either win or very nearly win. These teams were the Bengals, Browns, Steelers, Panthers, and Cardinals. After studying these games, I was generally listing 5 important keys to the game across a number of threads in General and in VIP.
1. Chris Chambers must dominate. I foresaw virtually zero scenarios in which Miami wins without getting Chambers 8+ catches. I probably should have just kept it at a dominating performance for Chambers. #1 WR options in the five games (Chad Johnson, Antonio Bryant, Hines Ward, Steve Smith, and Anquan Boldin) combined for 36 catches, 541 yards, and 8 TDs. It is obvious that when the Bears give up TDs, it is USUALLY to wide receivers that make plays on their secondary.
2. Donnie Jones must control Devin Hester, who is the most dangerous returner in football at the moment. Jones shares similar traits with other young directional punters like Nick Harris and Chris Kluwe, both of whom controlled Devin Hester. The Bears narrowly escaped a Cardinals loss because of Devin Hester's punt return TD.
3. Jason Taylor must get into Rex Grossman's head early. This seemed kind of simple. Do what he did against Favre, except Grossman does not have the ability to shake it off like Favre does because Favre has a LOT of experience and Grossman has always been Glassman when he gets hit a little. Why single out Taylor and not the others? Because Taylor is BY FAR our best pass rush presence.
4. Miami must get a lead and run the ball with a lot of attempts. Important to note is that it is NOT that important to have a bunch of success. But having a lot of attempts keeps the time of possession in your favor a little better, and even better it wears down the Bears defense. In the 5 game study, there were an average of 28 rush attempts by the teams' top runningbacks.
5. Be efficient against the run and get them away from it. It seemed like when you get a lead and you are efficient protecting against the run, you can get the Bears throwing and that takes them out of their game. So, I figured this had to be one of the big goals.
All keys were very reachable for this team, as bad as it was at 1-6. That is why I kept saying that believe it or not this game was very winnable and that we have absolutely every reason to believe this game will at the very least be competitive.
Well, the team surprised me.
They came up with a few keys of their own.
1. Chambers 5 catches, 54 yards, TD. Almost but not quite what I had in mind but Joey kept underthrowing/overthrowing the guy so he can hardly be blamed. He had one drop early on a deep throw where he probably could have had it...but otherwise a lot of the passes coming his way were very inaccurate.
2. Donnie Jones limited Hester to 5.5 yard average on 2 punt returns. Our coverage team did him one better by forcing two fumbles!
3. Jason Taylor got pressure early, an interception returned for a TD, and a sack/fumble. Rex never recovered from the early pressure.
4. Miami ran Ronnie 29 times. Right around the average of the teams that beat or nearly beat the Bears. But again, Miami did me one better! They actually ran WELL!
5. Miami limited the Bears to 3.7 ypc, on 28 rushes from their top RBs...compared to 42 pass attempts..
But they didn't stop there, they won some of Nick Saban's keys to the game...
1. Limit turnovers. Two turnovers is two too many but they were limited to just one party this time, Harrington. More problematic was when everyone kept contributing a turnover in weird ways, either on a special teams return or block, a WR fumble, RB fumble, WR popping up a ball for the D to pull down, etc.
2. Make the most of turnover opportunities. The fact that we forced 3 fumbles was very impressive but the real impressive thing to me was all the catching we were doing on defense on the interceptions. Renaldo Hill didn't let his interception escape. Jason Allen didn't let his interception escape. Jason Taylor didn't let his interception escape. These were opportunities that this defense had been creating prior to today, but they had not been able to capitalize by pulling them down. That's important. It isn't like the Bears were the first team to screw up against us and nearly get picked off or have costly fumbles. We just had not displayed the ball skills.
3. Score in the red zone. 17 points on 5 trips in the red zone. The missed FG and the interception were unfortunate, but otherwise we punched it in from the red zone twice passing the ball. Wasn't great, but it could have been a lot worse against this D.
Here were some difference-makers.
1. Yeremiah Bell. 5 solos, 2 passes defensed, forced fumble. The guy made the SAME PLAYS that he was making as a part-time dime guy that mostly blitzed, except this time he started the whole day. He was great. He made fantastic breaks on the ball and seemed to always be in the mix from a tackle standpoint. He makes heads up plays and plays so fast and so sudden, the big plays flow. Unfortunately he WILL take an incorrect angle once in a while and he'll also miss his assignment. He did both in this game, but it didn't hurt too much and I'll take the passes defensed, tackles, and forced fumble at the expense of a run that went about 7 yards further than it should have. Most of all we didn't have a safety that could be victimized deep like Tillman could be...and that alone was worth the move.
2. Andre Goodman. Great day for Andre. Had a good day deep, painted his men in coverage, broke on the balls, picked up the Yeremiah Bell fumbled and returned it 33 yards. He is showing every week that he really is our best corner. And no, that does not mean he's the man with one eye in the land of the blind. He's for real.
3. Channing Crowder. Fantastic stretch building for Channing, who is settling in as a big time player for us (finally, IMO). His pressures on Rex Grossman were HUGE. He laid Rex OUT on a number of plays...hits that made you go "Ooooohhhh!" Had 2 QB Hurries in addition to all his tackles.
4. Zach Thomas on the blitz! Yes, Zach was an extremely effective blitzer today and it was very fun to see this defense go after Rex with such visciousness.
5. The OL, of course. I'm not talking about the run blocking. I'm talking about the pass protection, which was AMAZING, considering who they were playing. In run blocking they did so-so. They had a lot of penetration on some runs, but they did also have more of the "effort plays" as Houck referred to them one where they get a hat on a hat in ground blocking and seal things so that Ronnie has one guy to beat.
6. Ronnie Brown. I'd say he was the biggest difference-maker, except it seemed that most of his running was wasted by ineffective throwing. But he helped us move the ball and without his time of possession, who knows if our D holds up like it did? The absolute KEY for Ronnie Brown though, was his SECOND HALF performance. 17 rushes for 98 yards does not describe it. He did it using his VISION and PATIENCE. There was a visible difference in his running style as he got more carries. He got a better feel for the blocking, a better feel for the defense, and he began being more patient in the backfield. His slamming up into the hole at 100 mph routine became much more of a two-step shuffle in which he picked his hole and patiently followed the blocking. Does that always work? No. Sometimes, the OL has problems sustaining blocks longer than a second and therefore slamming the hole is best. Sometimes, it takes a few seconds for blocks to develop in which case patience is best. Today, as he got more carries, Ronnie learned the difference and took advantage. As much as everyone wants to give the OL all the credit for the ground game, Ronnie did this one in the second half with his patience and adaptation to the game. It only further enforces that we NEED to get him these 25 carry games more often. He has literally gotten better with each and every carry throughout his career.
7. Dom Capers. The X's and O's of the game were just too good for the Bears offense. Give that one to Capers, possibly Saban too. Everything we did from a coverage standpoint confused Grossman. We gave him a lot of different blitz packages and we got pressure with nearly all of them, especially with linebacker blitzes. Using Channing as a blitzer more helped a lot. We also made more use of guys like Newman and Adams on blitzes.
The reason I didn't call Jason Taylor a difference maker is because he's been doing this ALL YEAR. But the above 7 factors were different or better than what they were before.
Aside from the more carries, I didn't notice that Mularkey's play calling STYLE was much different today. We still took what the D gave us. The reason we had many more runs was because we LED during the game. Last time we led an opponent significantly, we had 26 rushes against Tennessee. A very, very significant portion of our poor run/pass balance can be attributed to our always playing from behind.
Overall we did actually see a LOT of the same things we'd always seen but we saw better execution on a number of factors...probably a few more of the things we've seen throughout the season happening at the same time. One good example would be good pass protection PLUS good run blocking...which has generally been one or the other throughout the year.
1. Chris Chambers must dominate. I foresaw virtually zero scenarios in which Miami wins without getting Chambers 8+ catches. I probably should have just kept it at a dominating performance for Chambers. #1 WR options in the five games (Chad Johnson, Antonio Bryant, Hines Ward, Steve Smith, and Anquan Boldin) combined for 36 catches, 541 yards, and 8 TDs. It is obvious that when the Bears give up TDs, it is USUALLY to wide receivers that make plays on their secondary.
2. Donnie Jones must control Devin Hester, who is the most dangerous returner in football at the moment. Jones shares similar traits with other young directional punters like Nick Harris and Chris Kluwe, both of whom controlled Devin Hester. The Bears narrowly escaped a Cardinals loss because of Devin Hester's punt return TD.
3. Jason Taylor must get into Rex Grossman's head early. This seemed kind of simple. Do what he did against Favre, except Grossman does not have the ability to shake it off like Favre does because Favre has a LOT of experience and Grossman has always been Glassman when he gets hit a little. Why single out Taylor and not the others? Because Taylor is BY FAR our best pass rush presence.
4. Miami must get a lead and run the ball with a lot of attempts. Important to note is that it is NOT that important to have a bunch of success. But having a lot of attempts keeps the time of possession in your favor a little better, and even better it wears down the Bears defense. In the 5 game study, there were an average of 28 rush attempts by the teams' top runningbacks.
5. Be efficient against the run and get them away from it. It seemed like when you get a lead and you are efficient protecting against the run, you can get the Bears throwing and that takes them out of their game. So, I figured this had to be one of the big goals.
All keys were very reachable for this team, as bad as it was at 1-6. That is why I kept saying that believe it or not this game was very winnable and that we have absolutely every reason to believe this game will at the very least be competitive.
Well, the team surprised me.
They came up with a few keys of their own.
1. Chambers 5 catches, 54 yards, TD. Almost but not quite what I had in mind but Joey kept underthrowing/overthrowing the guy so he can hardly be blamed. He had one drop early on a deep throw where he probably could have had it...but otherwise a lot of the passes coming his way were very inaccurate.
2. Donnie Jones limited Hester to 5.5 yard average on 2 punt returns. Our coverage team did him one better by forcing two fumbles!
3. Jason Taylor got pressure early, an interception returned for a TD, and a sack/fumble. Rex never recovered from the early pressure.
4. Miami ran Ronnie 29 times. Right around the average of the teams that beat or nearly beat the Bears. But again, Miami did me one better! They actually ran WELL!
5. Miami limited the Bears to 3.7 ypc, on 28 rushes from their top RBs...compared to 42 pass attempts..
But they didn't stop there, they won some of Nick Saban's keys to the game...
1. Limit turnovers. Two turnovers is two too many but they were limited to just one party this time, Harrington. More problematic was when everyone kept contributing a turnover in weird ways, either on a special teams return or block, a WR fumble, RB fumble, WR popping up a ball for the D to pull down, etc.
2. Make the most of turnover opportunities. The fact that we forced 3 fumbles was very impressive but the real impressive thing to me was all the catching we were doing on defense on the interceptions. Renaldo Hill didn't let his interception escape. Jason Allen didn't let his interception escape. Jason Taylor didn't let his interception escape. These were opportunities that this defense had been creating prior to today, but they had not been able to capitalize by pulling them down. That's important. It isn't like the Bears were the first team to screw up against us and nearly get picked off or have costly fumbles. We just had not displayed the ball skills.
3. Score in the red zone. 17 points on 5 trips in the red zone. The missed FG and the interception were unfortunate, but otherwise we punched it in from the red zone twice passing the ball. Wasn't great, but it could have been a lot worse against this D.
Here were some difference-makers.
1. Yeremiah Bell. 5 solos, 2 passes defensed, forced fumble. The guy made the SAME PLAYS that he was making as a part-time dime guy that mostly blitzed, except this time he started the whole day. He was great. He made fantastic breaks on the ball and seemed to always be in the mix from a tackle standpoint. He makes heads up plays and plays so fast and so sudden, the big plays flow. Unfortunately he WILL take an incorrect angle once in a while and he'll also miss his assignment. He did both in this game, but it didn't hurt too much and I'll take the passes defensed, tackles, and forced fumble at the expense of a run that went about 7 yards further than it should have. Most of all we didn't have a safety that could be victimized deep like Tillman could be...and that alone was worth the move.
2. Andre Goodman. Great day for Andre. Had a good day deep, painted his men in coverage, broke on the balls, picked up the Yeremiah Bell fumbled and returned it 33 yards. He is showing every week that he really is our best corner. And no, that does not mean he's the man with one eye in the land of the blind. He's for real.
3. Channing Crowder. Fantastic stretch building for Channing, who is settling in as a big time player for us (finally, IMO). His pressures on Rex Grossman were HUGE. He laid Rex OUT on a number of plays...hits that made you go "Ooooohhhh!" Had 2 QB Hurries in addition to all his tackles.
4. Zach Thomas on the blitz! Yes, Zach was an extremely effective blitzer today and it was very fun to see this defense go after Rex with such visciousness.
5. The OL, of course. I'm not talking about the run blocking. I'm talking about the pass protection, which was AMAZING, considering who they were playing. In run blocking they did so-so. They had a lot of penetration on some runs, but they did also have more of the "effort plays" as Houck referred to them one where they get a hat on a hat in ground blocking and seal things so that Ronnie has one guy to beat.
6. Ronnie Brown. I'd say he was the biggest difference-maker, except it seemed that most of his running was wasted by ineffective throwing. But he helped us move the ball and without his time of possession, who knows if our D holds up like it did? The absolute KEY for Ronnie Brown though, was his SECOND HALF performance. 17 rushes for 98 yards does not describe it. He did it using his VISION and PATIENCE. There was a visible difference in his running style as he got more carries. He got a better feel for the blocking, a better feel for the defense, and he began being more patient in the backfield. His slamming up into the hole at 100 mph routine became much more of a two-step shuffle in which he picked his hole and patiently followed the blocking. Does that always work? No. Sometimes, the OL has problems sustaining blocks longer than a second and therefore slamming the hole is best. Sometimes, it takes a few seconds for blocks to develop in which case patience is best. Today, as he got more carries, Ronnie learned the difference and took advantage. As much as everyone wants to give the OL all the credit for the ground game, Ronnie did this one in the second half with his patience and adaptation to the game. It only further enforces that we NEED to get him these 25 carry games more often. He has literally gotten better with each and every carry throughout his career.
7. Dom Capers. The X's and O's of the game were just too good for the Bears offense. Give that one to Capers, possibly Saban too. Everything we did from a coverage standpoint confused Grossman. We gave him a lot of different blitz packages and we got pressure with nearly all of them, especially with linebacker blitzes. Using Channing as a blitzer more helped a lot. We also made more use of guys like Newman and Adams on blitzes.
The reason I didn't call Jason Taylor a difference maker is because he's been doing this ALL YEAR. But the above 7 factors were different or better than what they were before.
Aside from the more carries, I didn't notice that Mularkey's play calling STYLE was much different today. We still took what the D gave us. The reason we had many more runs was because we LED during the game. Last time we led an opponent significantly, we had 26 rushes against Tennessee. A very, very significant portion of our poor run/pass balance can be attributed to our always playing from behind.
Overall we did actually see a LOT of the same things we'd always seen but we saw better execution on a number of factors...probably a few more of the things we've seen throughout the season happening at the same time. One good example would be good pass protection PLUS good run blocking...which has generally been one or the other throughout the year.
