How Bears plan to use minibye to their advantage for second year in a row
How Bears plan to use minibye to their advantage for second year in a row originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago
Last season, the Bears played their best stretch of football coming out of their “mini-bye,” a 10-day stretch between their Week 6 Thursday Night Football matchup against the Commanders and their Week 7 Monday Night Football date with the Patriots. Now, the team is looking to repeat that success.
This is the first of two mini-byes for the Bears, but each of them will be nine day breaks, not 10, since they’ll play on Sunday following their two TNF games. Still, the team is employing the same principles to improve.
First, coaches honed in on each specific player. They watched tape, diagnosed a couple of things each player can improve upon in the run game and in the pass game, then developed a strategy for how to help the player correct those mistakes. As always, the keys come back to technique and fundamentals.
From there, they look at their schemes. They focus on how to improve in critical situations, like on third-down, in the red zone, or in two-minute drills. Once again, they sit down to create an action plan for how to improve in those areas.
Last season, we saw whole-scale changes coming out of the mini-bye. That’s when offensive coordinator Luke Getsy reorganized the offense around Justin Fields’ legs. We saw more moving pockets and designed runs, and in turn saw a lot more explosive plays. The Bears went from averaging 18.3 points over their first six games to averaging 29.6 points over their next five games.
This season, the Bears got a bit of a head start on their self-scouting changes. We’ve seen the team shift away from an emphasis on timing and rhythm passes for Fields, to mixing in more designed runs and bootlegs for Fields to get on the move. Over the first three weeks of this season, Fields averaged 175.3 passing yards per game, 36.3 rushing yards per game. He scored four touchdowns and turned the ball over five times. But over the next two games, Fields averaged 308.5 passing and 41 yards rushing. He scored eight touchdowns and turned the ball over twice.
“When you look at the growth that he has had over the year, of this year, it’s been really good,” said head coach Matt Eberflus. “The steps he has taken the last couple of weeks has been where we all want it to go. He’s done that. We just got to keep building on that. Just being the consistent performer that he is. He’s always going to work hard in practice. He’s always going to work his tail off to get that done.
“Putting himself in position and us as coaches putting him in position to succeed is paramount. He has done a good job with that the last couple weeks. We just got to keep building on that and being able to distribute the ball to different skill in our offense is going to be paramount going forward.”
On defense we’ve seen some early changes, as well. The Bears have had a hard time affecting opposing QBs in the early stages of the game, so Eberflus dialed up more blitzes against the Commanders. It worked. After notching just two sacks in the first four games, the Bears got home for five sacks in Week 5.
“Really it’s about the pressure,” Eberflus said. “We have to get creative. Sending different pressure players I think is important as you saw the other night. Again, it’s got to be done with the right kind of guys. The pressure player that’s coming matters. That could be somebody from the front four but it could be somebody from the second level. Again, you got to adapt. You got to adjust a little bit. We’ll see where it goes from here.”
Moving forward, we don’t know what to expect from scheme changes. There could be little tweaks to enhance the changes they’ve already made, or new ideas to go even further. There could be personnel changes, too.
Last year, the Bears gave some players extra playing time, obviously leading to less playing time for others. For instance, the team decided to give Armon Watts the majority of the team’s snaps at nose tackle over Angelo Blackson to help in run defense. Larry Borom initially lost his job as the starting right tackle due to injury, but when Borom was healthy enough to play he didn’t return to the lineup. Riley Reiff held on to the job.
Something similar could happen this year. The Bears could look at Dominique Robinson’s 1.5% pass rush win rate this year and give more opportunities to Rasheem Green, who’s got a 6.8% pass rush win rate. Maybe Gervon Dexter gets some extra tick at defensive tackle after his improved performance as a backfield disruptor in Week 5? The team already made the personnel decision to get rid of Chase Claypool and start playing with two tight ends more often. That jump started production for DJ Moore and Cole Kmet. Maybe they have something else in mind to get Darnell Mooney or Tyler Scott more involved?
It’s hard to predict exactly what the Bears will do, but it’s safe to say there will be some changes for the team in the near future.
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