If an NFL head coach could chose when his team's bye week is, it'd probably be around the middle of the season. Not too early (like Week 4 or 5), not too late (like Week 13 or 14), right in the middle. Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson surely loved it when this year's schedule landed and the bye was in Week 10.
A, let's call it imperfect, win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 9 also gave the Bears' coaching staff plenty to analyze and work to fix during the week off.
The Bears' offense is, of course, Johnson's prideful domain. While that side of the ball has been plenty good again this season, the issues have been clearly visible too.
Entering Week 10, according to Football Database, the Bears 14 accepted holding penalties are tied for most in the league. Their six delay of game penalties are tied for third-most in the league.
Erase a good portion of those mistakes, and suddenly the league's seventh-best scoring offense entering Week 10 has room to be even better.
Coming out of the bye week, here are the three biggest things Johnson has to fix about the Bears' offense.
3 fixes for the Bears' offense Ben Johnson hopefully found during the bye week
3. Red zone
Entering Week 10, the Bears are averaging the second-most red zone trips per game in the league (4.2, according to Team Rankings). But, as anyone who has watched could assume, they are just 20th when it comes to scoring touchdowns in the red zone.
The game where red zone struggles showed up the most egregiously was Week 4 against the New York Jets. The Bears utterly dominated time of possession, holding the ball for nearly 43 minutes, but they went just 2-for-7 in the red zone in a 23-12 victory.
One of those failures to score a touchdown in the red zone was the final drive that ended in kneel-downs, but all three of Cairo Santos' field goal makes were from 30 yards out or less. A better team easily could've burned the Bears for that lack of scoring area proficiency.
Before the game against the Buccaneers, the Bears were 11-for-13 in the red zone in the first three games after Caleb Williams returned from his hamstring injury. So there are signs of better things to come there, but improvement/better consistency is necessary.
2. Put Luther Burden on the field more
Burden had at least 95 yards or a touchdown in four straight games heading into the bye week. A lot has been made of his in-game production split, first half vs. second half, but he also has played less than 60 percent of the offensive snaps in three of those last four games.
A big reason for those low snap shares is situational, as Burden often loses work in favor of Kalif Raymond when the Bears put two or three tight ends on the field. Raymond is highly valued, and valuable, but he should not be eating into Burden's snaps like that. The variability of the Bears' offense in 12 and 13 personnel feels like it's being limited by their own choices regarding who's on the field.
However it looks, and there is a balance to be struck, wondering what Burden could do if he simply played more cannot be a talking point over the rest of the season.
1. Run the ball better (and more)
While there are no huge issues with D'Andre Swift, now that he has corrected his odd fumbling issue from earlier in the season, the absence of Kyle Monangai for five straight games before the bye has been felt in the Bears' run game.
From Weeks 1-4, the Bears averaged 196 rushing yards per game with more than 230 yards on the ground twice when Monangai was available, From Weeks 5-9, Chicago averaged just 98.6 rushing yards per game with less than 100 yards three times. While Tampa Bay's run defense is strong, not running the ball more during Williams' run of interceptions in that game was pretty inexplicable.
In those five games without Monangai, replacement RB2 Roschon Johnson has had more than five carries just once, with zero in Week 9. That is not the kind of workload split Ben Johnson wants, nor is it ideal for Swift to be as effective as he can be.
Monangai is expected to return to action after the bye. The Bears' Week 11 opponent, the New Orleans Saints, have the league's fourth-worst run defense coming into Week 10. So a likely renewed commitment to the run game will be paired nicely with an ideal circumstance to get things back on track.
Getting the run game back into form will be critical for the Bears. From Week 12-18, four division games (including both against the Detroit Lions) and two of the best teams in the AFC (the Jacksonville Jaguars and Buffalo Bills) are on the slate.
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