Three Keys for Bears Upset of Lions
The Bears have to hope Phil Snow has something up his sleeve, or that he gives Matt Eberflus a sleeve with something up it.
Maybe it even has a used game plan in it.
The Bears brought the former Panthers defensive coordinator in as a defensive assistant to analyze film and help find flaws in opposing offenses a little over a month ago.
It seems to be working as the Bears defense has become the second toughest in the NFL to run against and the addition of Montez Sweat now might help do something about the passing game.
"Phil's been great," Bears coach Matt Eberflus said. "He really has. To have the wealth of expereince, for him being a coordinator, is really a neat part of it. He loves to watch film and loves to break the opponent down, so that's been fabulous for us.
"We get really a head start."
Snow's contribution includes talking for 90 minutes to the defense about situations involving their opponent, from down and distance to red zone tendencies.
"He's had our analytics department help him as we've went," Eberflus said. "It's gotten better and better every single week in terms of the data. But for me just bouncing ideas off of him and from a former play caller and a play caller of recent, it's been really good."
The Bears have to hope Snow borrowed from one of his former team's game plans for Sunday's game.
The Lions turnaround began with the 31-30 win over the Bears last year at Soldier Field and in their stretch of 19 games they had just four losses.
One of those was to Snow's former team, the Carolina Panthers, although at the time he had already been fired as defensive coordinator.
The Panthers smothered the Lions 37-23 but were losing 34-13 in the fourth quarter of an entirely lopsided game played by Carolina with Sam Darnold at quarterback.
They held Detroit to 45 rushing yards in the game, which definitely helped. The running game helped the defense.
Here are three Bears keys to knocking off the Lions, some of which could be part of Snow's recommendations.
1. Bring Back the Past
Last year Luke Getsy started out a game after the mini-bye by using a Justin Fields offensive game plan against New England that involved several quarterback runs, utilizing fullback Khari Blasingame as much as possible, and emphasizing the running game.
Fields needs to be running the ball again like in that game and several subsequent games because one of the Detroit defensive weaknesses has been mobile quarterbacks and QB runners.
Last year Fields found this out with 147 yards rushing against the Lions at Soldier Field in a 31-30 loss. He had 132 in Detroit in a blowout loss, but was injured in the game.
Letting Fields play freely seems to be an area of emphasis for the Bears this week, as Eberflus pointed out on Friday.
Both Baltimore and Seattle beat the Lions with mobile, athletic quarterbacks, although not necessarily with huge running contributions from them. The Lions overcompensated for the QBs who ran and left themselves open to plays by others rather than Baltimore's Lamar Jackson and Seattle's Geno Smith.
Fields can play that type of game. It's a style of game that would allow the Bears to maintain ball control and keep Detroit's offense off the field.
The Lions might be third against the run but trying to defend too many things weakens the run defense and they're playing against the second-ranked running attack.
Keeping the ball on the ground with Fields or others running and picking up first downs will improve time of possession. Detroit is 7-0 when it possesses the ball longer than opponents. When it didn't have time of possession, Detroit lost.
One way to do it is what the Panthers did to the Lions and that was pound the ball at them. They ran for 320 yards on the Lions, 168 of them coming from a back the Bears know well. It was D'Onta Foreman.
2. Early Heat
The Bears need to come after Goff early in the game. Seattle and Baltimore got very aggressive with the Lions early in their wins over Detroit. The Ravens sacked Goff on the first drive and forced a punt. Goff was off kilter the rest of the first half. He is deadly when he settles in and is timing everything up, the way Justin Herbert and Kirk Cousins did against the Bears defense.
Disruption through the blitz but also by stunting defensive linemen can also work. The Bears are not a big stunting team because pulling defensive linemen out of their gaps can disrupt their approach in the single gap front. But they haven't had the best pass rush and without gambling too much in back they can benefit from the pass rush with stunting.
The Lions are tied for the NFL lead in touchdown plays of 20 yards or longer and stunting can help achieve that pass rush heat early better than blitzing because they get to keep their linebackers and secondary back and in position to prevent the big plays like the Lions have used to score on through the season.
3. Take a Shot
Whether it's an occasional deep pass against the Lions secondary by Fields, or that trick play Eberflus said he had up his sleeve, the Bears need to trot it all out there.
Why not? At 3-7 they're going nowhere unless they win out. The Lions suddenly have Minnesota making noise behind them. They could get uptight about it all and collapse. They fell apart against Carolina last year and it cost them a playoff spot.
Running, then throwing on play-action deeper on the Lions might not be the worst idea. They have the best offensive line they can put on the field back and blocking for Fields.
Detroit gave up four TD passes last week, the highest total in the NFL for Week 10. The Lions are 20th against the pass and 18th in yards allowed per attempt.
The Bears offense has been mired in a 17-yard range with Tyson Bagent at quarterback. It's time to break loose downfield for the Bears if they hope to pull off an upset.
One other way to take a shot is outgamble the gambler. Dan Campbell loves going for fourth downs. A fake on fourth down or simply outgambling him can turn the tables. The Ravens and Seahawks didn't have trouble handling the fourth-down gambles Campbell loves.
Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven
