Defense Finding Ways to Achieve Their Ends

It's taken a while but everything seems to be looking up finally for the Bears defense, and not just because coach Matt Eberflus finally got help on that side of the ball with the coaching staff.

The Bears hired Phil Snow to be senior defensive analyst, someone who studies upcoming opponents and gives the team reports ahead of games. Snow was Panthers defensive coordinator for Carolina 2020-22 and had previous NFL assistant coaching experience on Rod Marinelli's Lions staff, which is how he came to be known to Bears coach Matt Eberflus.

For the last eight quarters, the Bears defense has begun to do pretty well without extra help, and especially in the second half Sunday against Minnesota. They've allowed 32 points in eight quarters and three touchdowns.

"Honestly it felt good," cornerback Jaylon Johnson said. "I felt like we played dominating football outside of that two minute before the halftime. Other than that, I feel like we dominated the game.

"Of course we wanted more turnovers, but I thought overall we dominated."

The 2-of-13 effort on third downs against the Vikings reversed their horrendous start in this area. They're still worst in the NFL but at least it's just above 50% instead of pushing 60%.

"I think what did they have, 130-some yards passing?" Johnson said.

Actually it was 174 net yards, and the first half didn't start as well with Kirk Cousins going 15-for-20, but then only 6 of 11 in the second half. Johnson was still complaining Monday about how they gave up a TD just before halftime, one that proved huge in a low-scoring game.

The Bears hadn't allowed consecutive opponents 20 points or less since they beat New England 33-14 and lost to the Commanders 12-7 last year before the trade of Roquan Smith. It was 14 straight games without doing it.

"So we've just got to keep building, keep finding ways to come together, stick together, to be aggressive, go out there and have energy and let our execution drive our energy and just continue to keep that juice throughout the duration of the game," Johnson said.

The juice was generated in the secondary by starters as they came back., although Eddie Jackson had to leave shortly after the game started when he aggravated a foot injury.

Vikings coach Kevin O'Connell noted how the Bears were more effective applying strategies he hadn't expected.

"Yeah, we got more single high (safety) than probably what we're accustomed to against those guys, but clearly a willingness to send some pressures, DB pressures, different linebacker pressures," O'Connell said.

Eberflus is pulling out the stops with blitzes as he tries to find some way, any way, to generate heat on passers. Mixing up coverages at least caused some confusion if they couldn't get there. It wasn't the standard Tampa-2 look all the time, and it included a healthy dose of dime coverage rather than standard nickel.

"Just variations of coverage," Eberflus said. "You can do a lot of different things with that because you've got some cover guys back, which was good to see, and you know, we'll base it on our matchups every single week to see where we are. If we match up better on dime we'll just do that or we'll just play nickel. But it's a week-to-week thing."

It's not just coverage. They've gotten desperate for sacks and pressure and now are up to 22% blitzes this year after they were last in the league at 14.1%. They're 25th now.

Their run defense has risen to eighth in the league after two straight games allowing less thatn 50 yards on the ground. This was a trademark of Eberflus defenses in Indianapolis.

"I thought we played with a confidence and swagger about us," linebacker T.J. Edwards said. "I thought people were just flying around. It's like the ball was snapped and there were like missiles going everywhere so it's like you love that. You love being part of a team like that.

"We tried to dictate the tempo as much as we could. So I give props to our coaches for putting us in good spots."

It's almost as if they've done a role reversal with the defense dominating now and the offense struggling, but now most likely without Justin Fields.

Either way, the goal is the same.

"We've got to figure out ways to win games," Johnson said.

It's a bottom-line business on both sides of the ball and all the dominant statistics their defense rang up on Sunday meant nothing in the end aside from indicate a positive trend for future games.

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