Chicago Bears vs Vikings: Matt Nagy and Ryan Pace’s jobs on the line

The Chicago Bears must continue to run this style of offense

Even though the Chicago Bears must focus on the run, Nagy should not abandon the pass. Which let’s face it, Nagy has never done so it won’t happen. However, the Bears very much need to run the ball close to 50 percent or more in their run-to-pass ratio to win this game.

Naturally, successful runs will set up play-action which Mitch Trubisky has had success with all season. Let’s say the Vikings start stacking the box because they expect, a run play then it is time for Trubisky to bootleg it away from the big uglies of the Vikings.

Trubisky has done well since he came back from his benching and for the most part of his career passing within 10 yards from the line of scrimmage. In this range, his inconsistent footwork is not an accident waiting to happen. Bill Lazor as Trubisky’s new play-caller has been very disciplined calling plays that play to Trubisky’s strengths.

This is a breakdown of his passes in the Texans’ game. He was 24/33 overall with 22/27 from 10 yards or less. All three touchdown passes were 10 yards or less. He was 2/5 in passes 10 to15 yards in the air. Passes 15 yards or longer, he was 1/2 and only one of them was longer than 20 yards. This was an incomplete pass that traveled 25 yards in the air.

In spite of many key injuries to the Vikings’ defense, it is still much better than what the Chicago Bears have faced over the last two weeks. Now the defense gets to comfortably concentrate on defending 10 yards beyond the line of scrimmage.

Whenever the Chicago Bears are in third and long plays, Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer is no doubt going to do his best to try to confuse Mitch Trubisky. Now that Bill Lazor is calling the plays we can also expect the Bears to counter that most of the time by getting Trubisky on the move and out of the pocket. This divides the field in half and makes Trubisky’s reads less problematic.