After looking at the snap counts for the Chicago Bears’ offense, you have to question everything this coaching staff is doing.
There’s no denying that the Chicago Bears performance against the Green Bay Packers on Sunday was an absolute debacle. There was no offensive cohesion, the defense was flat, and there seemed to be no game plan coming off a bye, which is quite remarkable.
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The Bears looked genuinely undisciplined after several poor penalties. Bottom line, the team was supposedly refreshed coming off a bye and facing their biggest rival, and they came out and laid an egg. They were ill prepared and seemingly unmotivated. With a performance like that, the fingers need to point at coaching.
When you dive deeper into the coaches’ game plans, you’ll see something quite alarming. Whatever plan the Bears’ might have had, it was really, really stupid. That may seem like a rudimentary and juvenile way to put it, but there really isn’t any other way.
Taking a dive into snap counts (courtesy of profootballreference.com), you’ll see that whatever John Fox and Dowell Loggains had planned lacked any intelligence. The Bears offense had the ball for 60 snaps. Jordan Howard was on the field for a season-low 48.3% of snaps. While that might be acceptable of Tarik Cohen was in the middle of having a phenomenal game, Cohen was only on the field for only 13 snaps (21.7%) and was nonexistent. Benny Cunningham was on the field for ONE less snap than Howard, 28 snaps for 46.7% of the offense. Cunningham is a nice sub to have on a roster, but to have him this involved in the offense is nonsensical.
Fox analyst Chris Spielman, after speaking with both Bears and Packers coaches, stressed how much the Packers were shadowing Cohen and how much of a threat they saw him as. So only Bears logic would mean that he should play 1 out of every 5 offensive snaps. Howard is, of course, the Bears workhorse, so having Howard out of the lineup for more than half of the offensive snaps is just more Bears’ logic.
Bears’ logic doesn’t end there. Let’s take a dive at the wide receivers. Tre McBride netted 92 yards receiving against the New Orleans Saints in the Bears’ previous game. He was making strides where it appeared that he may actually become a legitimate target for Mitch Trubisky and the offense. So after a great game, it makes perfect sense that McBride would be on the field for 7 offensive snaps (11.7% of the game), while Josh Bellamy was on the field for 66.7% of the team’s offensive snaps. I understand Bellamy had a touchdown, but it’s become very clear that Bellamy is not an offensive weapon. He makes too many mistakes on a regular basis.
The Bears mostly used Dontrelle Inman and Kendall Wright at WR and when they went with 3-WR sets, it was Josh Bellamy that was on the field, not McBride. Markus Wheaton also returned. Either Wheaton wasn’t really ready to play or the Bears coaching staff has decided that he can’t play because he was on the field for only 2 offensive snaps.
Wheaton definitely has had his struggles and isn’t worth the money the Bears gave him, but he certainly is a better NFL player than Bellamy. And having this argument is pointless knowing that McBride has flashed more ability than either of them and he sat on the sidelines as well.
Not counting Trubisky, it’s become pretty clear that the Bears best healthy weapons on offense right now are Howard, Cohen, Wright and McBride. It’s pretty difficult to win when only Wright was on the field for a significant amount of action.
As the case against John Fox gains momentum, seeing poor game planning like this is only one step closer to sealing his fate.