Matt Nagy Acquires Sudden Taste for Running the Ball
This is how far the Bears have come: Coach Matt Nagy is cozying up to a running back and a kicker.
The man who couldn't throw enough passes is suddenly discovering how valuable it can be to hand the ball to David Montgomery—with all due respect to offensive line coach Juan Castillo for borrowing his pet saying—over, and over, and over, and over.
And Nagy having trust in any kicker is especially encouraging after Cody Parkey, who was busy doinking kicks again Sunday night for the Browns. Cairo Santos is 22-for-24 this year for the Bears. That's Robbie Gould level.
Montgomery ran 32 times for 146 yards in Sunday's 33-27 win over the Minnesota Vikings.
As a team, the Bears ran 42 times for 199 yards, their most rushing yards since John Fox's final season when they ran for 232 yards against Cincinnati (Dec. 10, 2017).
"We'll continue to keep that going mixing in some different things and keeping defenses on their heels," Nagy said.
Mitchell Trubisky only needed to throw 21 times, and can that be a bad thing when he makes throws like the one into the end zone for Cameron Dantzler's interception which nearly ruined a good day for the entire team?
"You see when he has to throw the ball 21 times and we're able to run the ball with running back for 32 attempts, it makes offense a lot easier and it's effective," Nagy said.
It's all the result of finally figuring out the blocking scheme in sync with the passing game, using passes to complement the run and vice versa. Having Cody Whitehair at left guard, Sam Mustipher at center, Alex Bars at right guard and Germain Ifedi at right tackle has been like discovering $20,000 laying on a sidewalk, too.
"Just seeing it from Week 1 to now is definitely like a full 360 seeing how those guys—because we were running a new scheme—so now everybody's getting it down and it's going well," Montgomery said. "The offense, we're started trusting each other and we're having fun doing it.
"They've been working their tails off. Kudos and hat’s off to those guys. Like I said, Sam being a leader, Alex being who he is, Charles (Leno) being who he is, Cody being who he is, Ifedi, they all just come together. Their personalities just make that line so much better. So I appreciate those guys and everything that they do and how they come to work."
While Trubisky did throw the critical interception, he did deserve some credit for the way he handled the offense on all but one play. The bootlegs and the runs he made complemented what Montgomery did.
“Well, it's big because you have the threat of Mitch getting out onto the edge and then the play actions—you've gotta keep them off-balanced with that," Nagy said. "It's all working in sync right now. All three parts of that are good.
"And then when we get down in the red zone, you lose a little bit of that feel. They have an extra defender with the back end line, so we want to be efficient there."
That was the interception.
So where does this leave them going to Jacksonvillle Sunday as they try to keep the pressure on Arizona for the final wild-card spot?
"What we've gotta do now is make sure that we don't get stale with it and we always try to stay one step ahead of these defenses, because you start having tendencies in what you do," Nagy said. "We want to help him out and help our offense out.
"I want to credit our coaching staff on offense for really working through all this, staying together and all of us having a lot of input. That part's been good."
If all that meant give it to Montgomery 33 times next time, that's fine.
Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven
