Chicago Bears offense can’t sustain off-script

Chicago Bears - Credit: Stephen R. Sylvanie-USA TODAY Sports
Chicago Bears - Credit: Stephen R. Sylvanie-USA TODAY Sports

The Chicago Bears offense is not clicking all the way. There are moments of brilliance and it looks like they cannot be stopped. However, those are met quickly by issues and stalled drives. This has been common, even in wins the past few weeks. The Bears put up 14 points on their first two drives against Detroit and score 10 the rest of the way. They took a lead agains the Raiders into the half and sat on it.

On Sunday, we saw more. The Bears looked electric on their first drive. Justin Fields hit big passes, they had big runs, and they led 7-0. Then, it all fell apart, and they scored 7 the rest of the way.

This is a clear trend and something that needs to be addressed. In fact, using charts RBSDM.com, it is clear that this team is completely different after the first quarter.

As noted in the tweet above, Justin Fields is a top 10 quarterback when the Bears are in the first quarter of games. He is with Tom Brady, Kyler Murray, Dal Prescott among others. From quarters two and on, he is literally the worst, and makes Zach Wilson look good.

It is one thing to tail off as the game goes on, but this is a quarterback going from great to awful in the flip of a switch.

It is obvious that the rookie will have some things to work on, but it is hard to look at this chart and not think of coaching.

The coaches script the first 15 plays or so, and it seems every time they run the script they score. They scored 28 points in six drives, the first two of the last three games.

After the first two drives, they are awful. That seems to clearly correlate with when the game script wears off. So, the coaches should know that they have something to start. The game script is great. Now, they need to find a way to adjust off of the game script and keep things rolling the rest of the way. So far, they have not been able to make that change.

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