Bears vs. Vikings: Snap counts, statistics, and additional informatio
During the Matt Eberflus era, the Chicago Bears have played a lot of ugly football, but at least they won 12 to 10 against the Minnesota Vikings yesterday.
Not only did ‘Flus win their first-ever NFC North game, but it also ended the team’s five-game losing streak against the Vikings.
Chicago’s defense dominated most of the game, but the offense couldn’t take advantage of the good field position they kept being gifted.
Vikings quarterback Josh Dobbs threw four interceptions, and the Bears defense stopped Minnesota on both of their fourth-down tries.
Chicago held the Vikes to just 2 of 9 on third downs, while the Bears were 8 of 18 and 1 for 1 on fourth down.
The Bears had more total yards (317 to 242), ran more plays (68 to 51), had more first downs (18 to 15), won the time of possession battle (35:50 to 24:10), and in what has become the norm for Eberflus’ team this season, the Bears also had more penalties (7 for 76 yards to 4 for 24 for Minnesota).
ESPN shared this remarkable nugget: The Bears won a game without scoring a touchdown for the first time since 1993. For those wondering about that box score,
Justin Fields played as well as possible within the framework of the game plan until a couple of late fumbles nearly cost the Bears the win.
But he overcame the turnovers with his first game-winning drive of the season. On the night, he was 27 or 37 (73%) passing for 217 yards and had a passer rating of 87.3. He was sacked three times, and he rushed 12 times for 59 yards.
This passing chart was unreal with how often offensive coordinator Luke Getsy called screens.
There are ways to get beyond a defense that frequently blitzes and plays a lot of men close to the line of scrimmage, but Getsy was excellent at executing screen after screen after screen, etc.
When questioned about why the team called so many screen passes following the game, Eberflus attributed it to Minnesota’s aggressive defense, adding that there were a “bunch of different ways you can” attack that kind of scheme.
Where were the run pass options, jet sweeps, slants, max protects, play actions, etc. if such were the case?
