A Better Formula to Beat Green Bay

An often-repeated phrase at Halas Hall this week pertained to Aaron Rodgers' ability to escape a pass rush.

"One of the best B-gap escape guys in football," defensive coordinator Alan Williams said of Rodgers. "You just have to play a complete football game."

Robert Quinn, Dominique Robinson, and several other defensive players parroted this comment about the B-gap antics of Rodgers, a comment which seems a bit misguided.

Rodgers avoiding the rush by running into the B-gap between tackle and guard is not necessarily a bad thing.

It shows the Bears are getting the job done well enough on the rush to flush him out, and then he's not able to throw it downfield to receivers.

With speed like the Bears have at linebacker in Roquan Smith and Nicholas Morrow, and with a playmaking safety like Jaquan Brisker, if Rodgers is scrambling against a zone for big yardage at age 38 then more power to him.

He's not going very far facing that kind of speed.

The Bears have plenty to worry about with the Packers offense even if Rodgers and Co. managed only seven points against the Vikings last week, and the three keys to a Bears win reflect this.

1. Rushing Deficit

The Bears can't afford a rushing gap. They had one in the last game, but they managed to offset it somewhat by maintaining the number of rushing attempts, by getting one big play for a touchdown and by benefiting from boneheaded 49ers penalties.

They had the same number of rushing attempts (37) even as they averaged less than 3 yards a carry. They were outrushed by 77 yards. It's highly uncommon for someone averaging 2.7 yards a carry to have 37 attempts but the Bears did.

So this formula involves limiting Green Bay's running game while also running for more yards themselves.

The reason they need to at least be close to the Packers in rushing yardage is they need possession time to keep Aaron Rodgers off the field. The Vikings had it last week. They owned the clock edge and not only kept pressure on Green Bay's offense with their defense but also with the lack of Packer opportunities.

The Bears did a horrendous job of this last week. By all rights, they should have lost the game. The 49ers had it for 33:28 to 26:32, even after the Bears were the ones eating away the last minutes to kill time.

Even 3-yard runs are welcome for their offense. As long as they can stay within a third-and-five or less, they can give themselves an opportunity to keep chains moving and keep Rodgers watching the game on the sideline.

In short, David Montgomery can't have another 17-carry, 26-yard day but they also can't give up 176 yards rushing to AJ Dillon and Aaron Jones they way they coughed up yards on the ground last week.

2. More Complexity on Offense

This will happen naturally because field conditions won't be the same, but the Bears need more imagination and the blocking to pull off those types of plays. They still apparently have the benefit of numerous unscouted looks because they didn't show much last week in the rain.

"(The Bears were) running really simple stuff in that second half just to kind of get plays off in that weather," tight end Cole Kmet said this week at Halas Hall.

Green Bay's defense isn't going to be combatting poor footing. It's going to require the threat of misdirection and establishing wide zone blocking to get this attack moving in Green Bay. They won't be able to challenge the Packers defense without this.

3. Interior Improvement

Justin Jones, Angelo Blackson, Armon Watts and Mike Pennel played poor games last week against a good 49ers line.

The interior defensive linemen for the Bears had no one with a Pro Football Focus grade higher than 60.3. That belonged to Watts.

Even if you discount PFF's grading system as flawed, it's not easy to ignore the 30.8 PFF grade starting three technique Jones had. And he didn't even have the worst grade. Blackson was at 30.1.

The Bears talked about the B-gap with regard to Rodgers' scrambling.

What they need to do this week is control the B-gap on running plays and then get their run stoppers off the field in passing situations so they can be replaced by interior rush men like Trevis Gipson.

They also need a better pass rush push from the inside on early downs from these bigger defensive linemen because Rodgers is at his worst when hands are in his face.

If the Packers offensive line is filled with replacements because of the knee injuries to tackles David Bakhtiari and Elgton Jenkins and the concussion to guard Jon Runyon, the Bears need to take advantage up front.

The Vikings did.

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