Three takeaways from Bears’ win over Saints
Sunday’s game against the New Orleans Saints felt like a trap for the Chicago Bears. They didn’t fall for it.
Chicago put together enough of a team performance to win its fourth straight game 26-14. The defense created four turnovers, the third time in the past four games, while the Bears’ running attack had another season-best performance.
Here are the five big takeaways from the team’s fourth straight win.
Running success not a fluke
Sunday was a good test to see whether the Bears’ season-best rushing performance against the Washington Commanders in Week 6 was for real or just a fluke. The unit proved that it might’ve turned the corner with another season-best showing.
Chicago relied on the run early Sunday and used it to move the ball down the field. The Bears rushed for a season-high 222 yards on 40 carries, smashing the season-high 145 rushing yards from a week ahead. The team’s 94 rushing yards in the first half were more than it had in two games heading into Sunday.
Lead running back D’Andre Swift, who battled a groin injury during the week, didn’t have a letdown Sunday after his best performance of the year a week ago. He rushed for another season high, this one 124 yards and a touchdown on 19 carries. Swift made nice cuts and took advantage of the lanes his offensive line created.
But it wasn’t just Swift that has to have Bears coaches excited that Sunday wasn’t an anomaly. Rookie Kyle Monangai also had a gutty performance, rushing for a career-high 81 yards on 13 carries, running in for his first career touchdown.
Swift, Monangai and Bears head coach Ben Johnson all credited a total team effort for the running attack turning a corner over the past two weeks. The offensive line is creating lanes while receivers and tight ends are blocking on the outside. It’s something they believe can be sustainable moving forward.
“It wasn’t clicking that first for us, the way we wanted to, where we planned for it, and we still got a long way to go,” Monangai said. “But today definitely felt like the start of us getting into our rhythm.”
Taking advantage of turnovers
The Bears’ defense put together another impressive performance Sunday by forcing four turnovers. Despite the continued defensive success, the offense failed to fully take advantage once again.
The Bears scored 10 points off their turnovers Sunday. Kicker Jake Moody knocked in a field goal after defensive end Montez Sweat’s fumble in the first quarter and the Bears scored a touchdown after cornerback Nahshon Wright’s interception in the second quarter.
Chicago failed to score any points after safety Kevin Byard’s interception in the fourth quarter while the Bears tried to run out the clock to end the game after linebacker Tremaine Edmunds’ interception.
It’s a trend that followed the Bears’ first five games. Chicago scored four touchdowns off turnovers — one was returned for a touchdown. The Bears knocked in five field goals off takeaways and failed to score off four more, one of which was an end-of-game situation.
“We’re not complementing our defense on a regular basis with a number of turnovers that we’ve had over the last four games,” Johnson said. “We should be able to turn those into more points.”
Inefficient play, again
Despite the lopsided final score, the Bears had a chance to blow the game open more but couldn’t because of their struggles on critical downs and penalties once again.
Chicago converted on three of its 12 third downs on Sunday for a 25% success rate. That matched the Bears’ season-low success rate, which was also three of 12 against the Minnesota Vikings in the season-opener.
The Bears also reverted to some of their bad habits from earlier in the season. Chicago committed 10 penalties for 92 yards, some of which derailed success offensively on third down.
Those numbers will need to improve when the Bears travel to Baltimore to play the Ravens on Sunday, Oct. 25. Johnson looked forward to making those improvements.
“When you win, you usually can coach a little bit harder,” Johnson said. “We’re always truth tellers on Monday in particular. When it’s good, we’ll tell them when it’s good. When it’s bad, we’ll tell them what we have to clean up. There’s a number of things there that we can get better at.”
Caleb Williams’ non-linear progress
When Johnson talked about quarterback Caleb Williams’ development over the offseason, he made sure to emphasize it wasn’t going to be linear throughout the season. Sunday proved how up and down it can be.
It felt like Williams never fell into a groove against the Saints. He made some nice completions for big gains at times. But he also scrambled often when he felt pressure and struggled to hit receivers on the run. He finished Sunday’s game with 172 passing yards, no touchdowns, an interception and a 57.7 completion rate.
Williams had impressed in the previous two games leading up to Sunday. He led the Bears on two game-winning drives on their last possession. But on Sunday, Williams relied on his defense and running attack to pick up the win.
Despite the comparatively down performance, Williams was encouraged about the step he could take from Sunday.
“There are things that I’m going to be better at,” Williams said. “There are things that weren’t hitting today, and you just have those days sometimes. It’s nice that we have a defense, we have a special teams, a punter, kicker, that can put us ahead, that can help us win games, a run game that can control the game. We get this figured out on my side, we’ll be putting up a lot of points and be very dangerous.”
Moody’s hot start
Backup kicker Jake Moody continued his hot start to his tenure with the Bears with another good outing Sunday.
Moody was perfect on Sunday, making all four of his field goal tries as well as two extra-point attempts. He knocked in kicks for 27, 39, 24 and 33 yards, respectively. Moody is now 8-for-9 in the two games he’s been asked to kick.
It’s been an encouraging development for both the Bears and Moody as starting kicker Cairo Santos continues to recover from a right thigh injury. Moody has proven to be a dependable kicker after the San Francisco 49ers released him this season after one game and the Bears added him to the practice squad.
Through two games, he’s proven to make a major difference.