Chicago Bears vs Vikings: What to expect with Bill Lazor calling plays

Differences between Bill Lazor and Chicago Bears head coach Matt Nagy

What could be the biggest difference between the two play callers is Bill Lazor will call plays that build off of each other. Someone who is great at this is the Rams head coach, Sean McVay. He sticks to a limited number of schemes then calls plays that look similar to a defense but are not the same play.

Then you have Matt Nagy who goes to the other extreme. He calls lots of different plays using different schemes and often brings in new personnel for a play. This puts the defense on alert and as we have seen also takes his players out of their comfort zone. The result is often a lose-lose for the Chicago Bears. This pattern is a big reason, if not the main reason, why their offense is statistically ranked low in virtually every statistical category.

The good news is Lazor appears to understand this all quite well. Here is what Lazor had to say about his approach to his new responsibilities:

"“You gotta deal with the realities of, OK, what didn’t go well and how do we fix it? You gotta be solution-oriented. If you can get everyone in the room, players and coaches together, thinking that way, solution-oriented — how do we get it better? — sometimes it looks like a huge task. But when you break it up into the little pieces and you just handle one little thing at a time, big things can then be tackled. That’s kinda what we have to keep our focus on. It’s always been that way. There’s never been a magic pill that I’ve found. So let’s just take care of a little piece at a time, be analytic about it, remove the emotion, try to remove the frustration. And it’ll be a great story later.”"

The Chicago Bears’ offensive strength is their passing game. If the offensive linemen can do their job well enough and Lazor isn’t shy about attacking the Vikings secondary, the Bears could build up an early lead and maybe even score in the third quarter. I know that’s a lot to ask of them but I believe this all could happen.

Allen Robinson should have a big game against the Vikings. I also hope Lazor gives Riley Ridley some looks early in the game. If he does well then don’t forget about him. If Ridley does not do well then let’s see which Anthony Miller has shown up on Monday night.

The icing on the cake for this game would be if Lazor got the tight ends involved to a good degree in his play calling. If the Bears can combine offensive line players being more focused and energetic with more two-tight end sets they might actually have a run game to talk about. This also could lead to some big pass plays from the tight ends.