Three keys for the Chicago Bears to beat the Denver Broncos
By Adam Childs
1. Get the running game going
Much was made of the Bears rushing attack heading into the season. They did trade away Jordan Howard, but they brought in Mike Davis in free agency and then they drafted David Montgomery who looked great in the preseason. Add in Tarik Cohen and the Bears were supposed to give teams fits with the rushing attack.
Fast forward to the game against the Packers and the Bears would rush just 15 times for 46 yards. Three of those rushes were Trubisky scrambling and one was a very questionable third-down a call to new Bear Cardarrelle Patterson. Cohen had zero rushes so that means Davis and Montgomery got 11 total rushes.
The Bears have to do more than that, especially with Trubisky trying to find his rhythm passing the ball (if it ever comes). Did Nagy get too cute with his play-calling? Maybe, but he still didn’t call enough rushes. Nagy did say some of that was RPO play calls where Trubisky threw a pass instead of running. But the question remains if he knew that, he probably should have called more designed runs to get the ball into his playmaker’s hands.
Trubisky is much better when the defense is off-balanced and the only way to do that is to establish the run and keeping the defense from pinning their ears back on him. If the Bears can do that against the Broncos it should ease the pressure from Trubisky and the rest of the offense.
They have guys that can go for 100 yards a game on 20 carries and they need to give them the chance to do that. It will then set up the RPO and play-action passes.
Josh Jacobs of the Raiders just went for 85 yards against this Broncos defense and the Bears should be able to do the same thing. But they won’t be able to if they even try to run the ball. If they can get at least 30 rushes in the game against the Broncos they will win.