Bears Explosive Not Productive

The Bears have the most explosive offense in the NFL.

It's safe to say not many people ever thought they would read this.

In a manner of speaking, it is true. Measured by one standard it is true anyway, but it's not the number that really counts. It's not scoring, where they are 19th.

Going into the start of Week 14, the Bears had 99 big plays. That's four more than all of last year and they still have four games to go.

Their 99 big plays lead the league, according to a chart released by Pro Football Focus' Marcus Mosher.

The big play is not a metric made up by analytic websites. It's a stat category kept by teams and it is comprised of run plays of 10 yards or longer and pass plays of 20 yards or longer. They also keep a log of pass plays 25 yards or longer with runs 10 yards or longer but the 20-yard/10-yard category has been a standard.

The Bears have 99 big plays this year. The Philadelphia Eagles have 97 and the Cleveland Browns 94, so the next Bears game features the two most explosive teams in the NFL in terms of big gains.

Most explosive plays during the 2022 season by team: pic.twitter.com/GhBnqMoFoy
— Marcus Mosher (@Marcus_Mosher) December 8, 2022

The total for the Bears is the highest they've had for a full season since it's been tracked and they still have four games to add to it.

The obvious reason why the Bears rank anywhere in this category is Justin Fields and his running. But having Khalil Herbert's explosive running and David Montgomery's consistent production doesn't hurt.

The Bears have 68 runs of 10 yards or more and just 31 pass plays of 20 yards or more.

Fields has 27 of the runs for 10 yards or longer. Herbert has 19 and Montgomery 15. Overall, Fields has 11 plays of 39 yards or longer and seven plays of 50 or longer.

Fields hasn't been impressed by numbers of this type. He has made this clear a few times and expressed in best in November after his big rushing day against Detroit.

"You just have to grasp what are your priorities as a player," he said. "Is it to break records or is it to win? And personally mine is to win. I don't care about breaking records. I just want to win games."

Their ratio between runs and passes is like no other team has and makes the Bears' rating possible.

The 68 runs is five better than Baltimore and seven better than Cleveland.

What's surprising is their 31 completions of 20 or longer is actually a higher total than some teams have. Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Atlanta, the New York Giants, Arizona and the L.A. Rams all had fewer than 31 completions of 20 yards or longer through Week 13. It's a group with some names few would have thought possible before the season, particularly Arizona and L.A.

Putting up more long passes like against Green Bay can help set the trend to better productivity in passing. They had five completions of 20 yards or longer in the game and four 24 yards or longer.

Finishing the big plays in the end zone has to be the priority when their bye week ends.

Typical of this situation was the 56-yard completion by Fields to Equanimeous St. Brown against the Packers. It was his longest completion of the year and didn't finish in the end zone, although they did get points on the next play.

Bears Big Plays Since Matt Nagy

(Passes 20 yards+ and Runs 10 yards+)

2022 99*

2021 93

2020 82

2019 67

2018 93

*4 games remaining

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