Kahlil enjoys quite a thrill
At least one Bears backup has taken advantage of his increased opportunities to do something positive with the football.
In the last two weeks, Kahlil Bell hasn’t foolishly run out of bounds, hasn’t turned the ball over and hasn’t been flustered.
The humble running back has even been happy to speak to reporters.
On the field, he’s been Bell on wheels since Matt Forte’s knee injury two weeks ago against Kansas City.
On Sunday against Seattle, Bell tried to fuel an offense that has been sucking fumes since quarterback Jay Cutler suffered a thumb injury that required surgery a month ago.
Bell caught a 25-yard touchdown pass from struggling backup QB Caleb Hanie with 1:51 left before halftime, breaking a 7-7 tie. Bell improvised on the play, angling toward the left side of the field. Hanie, who had scrambled to his left, led Bell perfectly.
“I had ran my route and I looked back and I saw Caleb in trouble,” Bell said. “I just tried to find a hole in the defense, and he did a great job of throwing the ball where I could catch it.”
It was the first NFL touchdown for Bell, who was signed by the Bears in 2009 after the undrafted free agent out of UCLA was cut by Minnesota.
In his NFL debut that season — a Sunday night game against Philadelphia at Soldier Field — Bell broke off a 72-yard run (the longest by a Bears rookie in franchise history), but did not score.
“I ran out of gas,” Bell recalled. “I was tired.”
Not Sunday.
His touchdown gave the Bears what turned out to be their only lead, as Seattle scored 31 unanswered points in the second half en route to a 38-14 win.
“It was cool,” Bell said of his first TD since 2008 with UCLA. “It was an exhilarating feeling. It’s just unfortunate it had to come in a loss. It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten into the end zone in a real football game that actually counted and meant something. But it would have been nice to have the win.
“I’ll trade the touchdown for a win any day.”
Bell was the Bears’ only bright spot on offense. He rushed 15 times for 65 yards (4.3 average) and caught 5 passes for 43 yards, leading the team in both categories. A week earlier at Denver, he established a career high with 5 catches and rushed for 40 yards, averaging 4.4 per carry.
This from a guy who was inactive for every Bears’ game last season, despite being healthy, when he backed up Forte and Chester Taylor.
But Bell knows he’s not the focus.
The Bears are 0-4 since Hanie replaced Cutler and have seen their playoff hopes all but officially dashed.
“Caleb’s a heck of a quarterback,” Bell said.
“But we got to do a better job of taking pressure off him, whether it’s the run game protecting him in the pocket (or other areas). You just got to tell him to keep his head up. Things like this happen. It’s football. This isn’t life. It’s a game. And in a game, you make mistakes. We made mistakes as an offense — not just him. Us. It’s a team thing. It’s a unit thing. We just got to do better on offense.”