Best Bears Approach for Beating Packers
The Bears offense will have its own bag of problems trying to move the ball on the league's sixth-ranked defense without running back David Montgomery, without running back Khalil Herbert, without starting right tackle Germain Ifedi and with Allen Robinson plagued by an ankle injury.
Stopping Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams has always created an entirely different level of anxiety for the Bears.
To contend with the Green Bay Packers on Sunday at Soldier Field, the Bears are going to need to deliver early blows in the battle the way the Detroit Lions did, but then actually finish the game better like against the Las Vegas Raiders last week.
Disrupting Rodgers is the most difficult aspect of it all.
"He's got a lot of years, he's seen a lot, he's super bright and he's super talented," Bears defensive coordinator Sean Desai said. "All of that is a good formula for a quarterback in this league and so he does it all and he's seen it all. And so that's what makes him really good."
Pressure from somewhere and somehow is going to be critical. It's something the Bears really never achieved against the Packers last year when they gave up 76 points in two games.
"That's right, you know I mean the challenge is to try to just get him off a read, you know and he's OK playing off a read because he's OK scrambling and extending plays, but at least you get him to the second or third one and you buy some time for the rush and the coverage to work together," Desai said. "And so that's the challenge and it's about mixing it up and giving him different looks that are honest or not honest.
"You know whether you're disguised or not it's about giving him different looks and giving him different pictures, and you just keep playing the game with him and it's going to be a 60-plus minute battle for us to do that."
It's tiring just thinking about battling Rodgers.
"You know you've got to mentally and physically strain in this game," Desai said.
1. Send Roquan Smith to do the job
The Bears have a tendency to not blitzing. With the pass rush they have so far, leading the NFL in sacks, they've had the luxury of keeping Smith in place to defend passes over the middle. Early in this game, they need to send Smith after Rodgers up the A gap, even off the edge to plant this seed. They need to bring the inside linebacker blitzing to get Rodgers off reads. When they don't do this, they need to send Duke Shelley on a slot blitz or possibly DeAndre Houston-Carson when he is in the game, maneuvers they haven't really tried much. The point of this is early disruption in any way, and the regular league-leading pass rush can work its magic as well. The problem with blitzing Rodgers is Aaron Jones is an excellent receiver and A.J. Dillon has proven he can be useful this way as well. Also, some Packer receivers are better in the scramble drill than they are at running routes. The best Bears bet for stopping the dump-off or a screen is always Smith because he's their best open-field tackler. So this will be a game when the Bears will need either Danny Trevathan or Alec Ogletree to step up and play the pass the way they have shown they play the run, so Smith can be free to attack. Pressure off the edge will always be possible with Khalil Mack and Robert Quinn and can end plays, but pressure from the middle from Smith blitzing would disrupt Rodgers to the point of actually getting him off his reads. Normally they could count on some of this interior heat coming from Akiem Hicks but it seems unlikely they'll see him again this week due to a groin injury.
2. Help on Davante Adams
It seems a foregone conclusion the Bears are going to put Jaylon Johnson on Davante Adams all over the field, if not all game then in much of it. They did this with Odell Beckham Jr. and he was playing at nowhere the level Adams is. The Bears may need to try some double-team techniques to stop Adams, and this is difficult to impossible when blitzing. But when they're not blitzing they need to consider an old Packers trick and use some two-man coverage, with a coverage cornerback trailing the receiver closely and a safety close over the top. Trying to disrupt the Rodgers-to-Adams pass combination is critical because the only other Packers receiver to show great consistency has been Randall Cobb in the slot, someone the Bears know well. Taking a chance on Cobb beating them, now at age 31 and in his 11th season, is preferable to letting Adams do it for touchdowns. If they're going to blend the blitz in, then they'll need more man-to-man coverage and less of their standard cover-3 or quarters for coverage anyway. So doubling Adams as much as possible is the way to go.
3. Familiar boring ball control plan
On offense the Bears need to stick with the game plan they used against the Packers at Soldier Field last year. Bill Lazor called one of the most conservative game plans ever when the Bears lost 35-16 in the regular-season finale. They ran plenty and came at the Packers with any short pass they could to extend drives, whether it was Mitchell Trubisky running it off the zone read or scrambling, or throwing receiver and running back screens. They kept running gambled and converted fourth-and-short plays, and took their time. When it was over they outgained the Packers by 40 yards. Even though the Packers had the ball for much of the second portion of the fourth quarter the Bears owned a whopping 35:28-24:32 time-of-possession edge. It's easy to look at the final score and be deceived. The Bears were actually down 21-16, driving at the Packers 25 with 11:27 remaining and had converted four fourth-and-short plays when they ran one of the worst fourth-down calls ever and had Trubisky rolling right and throwing to Allen Robinson heading toward the sideline. The Packers realized it was coming and it was an easy play to defend, one which didn't leave Trubisky enough options. It was stopped and the entire thing unraveled at this point. The ball-control method works against the Packers. The Saints used it in the opener this year and had two 15-play drives and a nine-play drive in the first half of a 38-3 shellacking administered to Green Bay. The Bears just need their defense to contain Rodgers better to allow this ball control to work.
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