Bear Down, Nerd Up: Roquan Smith tackles his way past Brian Urlacher's 2002 season

The Bears' 29-3 victory over the New York Giants on Sunday marked their largest margin of victory this season. It was their largest margin of victory since a 36-7 win over the Houston Texans in December 2020.

It also probably said more about the state of the Giants than it did about the state of the Bears.

The Bears marked their 800th victory in team history (including the postseason). Only the Packers (818) have more victories among NFL teams.

The win assured head coach Matt Nagy that he will finish his Bears tenure with a winning record, if he were to lose his job next week. Nagy is 34-32 as the coach of the Bears, including a pair of playoff losses.

Here's what other stats and figures stood out this week.

Below zero: The Bears held the Giants to minus-10 passing yards. It was the third-fewest passing yards by a Bears opponent in the Super Bowl era, according to the team. The Bears held the Packers to minus-12 yards on Nov. 4, 1973, and they held the Falcons to minus-22 yards on Nov. 24, 1985.

The Falcons had an impressively bad game against the '85 Bears. Quarterbacks David Archer and Bob Holly combined to go 3-for-17 passing for 16 yards with 5 sacks totaling a loss of 38 yards.

The 1973 Packers completed only 3-of-16 pass attempts against the Bears at Lambeau Field. Quarterback Scott Hunter was sacked three times and Jerry Tagge was sacked once.

For the '73 Packers, that was the third game of a dismal three-game stretch during which they combined for 19 passing yards - yes, 19 passing yards over three games. Weirdly, they rebounded to beat the Bears in the rematch at Soldier Field during the 1973 regular-season finale. Neither the Bears nor the Packers made the playoffs that season.

The Bears' new sack king: It's old news now, but the Bears have a new single-season sack record holder. Robert Quinn recorded his 18th sack of the season in the fourth quarter Sunday. He briefly led the NFL in sacks for one day before Monday's game kicked off and Pittsburgh's T.J. Watt recorded a whopping 4 sacks against Cleveland.

Watt now has 21.5 sacks on the season. Quinn seems unlikely to catch Watt for the NFL lead. No Bears player has led the NFL in sacks since Richard Dent in 1985. That appears likely to remain true. Watt is one sack shy of Michael Strahan's single-season record of 22.5 sacks set in 2001.

Quinn needs one more sack to tie his career high. He had 19 sacks in 2013 with the St. Louis Rams. This is his fifth season with double-digit sacks.

Career high: Inside linebacker Roquan Smith led the Bears in tackles for the 13th time this season. He added nine more tackles to his season total Sunday. Smith has 157 combined tackles this season, which ranks fourth in the NFL.

Looking solely at tackles, Smith just had the best season by a Bears defender since Brian Urlacher's 153-tackle season in 2002. That marked Urlacher's career high. It was one of four All-Pro seasons for Urlacher.

According to the Bears, Smith is the fastest Bears player since 1994 to reach 500 tackles for his career. He did it in 58 games and currently has 518 combined tackles for his career.

It might surprise football fans to learn that tackles were not consistently tracked in the NFL until 1994 and they did not appear on NFL.com's stat leaders page until 2001.

Dante Jones unofficially holds the team record with 189 total tackles in 1993. The Bears media guide does not list team records for tackles.

Revisiting the rookie records: If Justin Fields plays this week - which remains a question as of Tuesday - the rookie quarterback has several Bears rookie records within reach. Three weeks ago, it seemed like a slam dunk that he would set a few of these records. Missing two games with an ankle injury makes it much tougher.

He would need to have a career-best day to set the rookie passing yards and passing touchdown records. He is currently 323 yards shy of Mitchell Trubisky's 2,193 passing yards as a rookie in 2017. Fields sits at 1,870.

He needs two touchdown passes to tie the rookie record and three to surpass it. Kyle Orton (2005) and Jim McMahon (1982) each threw nine touchdown passes during their rookie seasons. Fields currently has seven.

Fields is 37 completions shy of Trubisky's rookie record of 196, so that record feels like it's out of reach (Fields' season high is 26 completions).

Mooney milestone? Receiver Darnell Mooney is 71 yards shy of reaching 1,000 for the season. The Bears have had 17 receivers tally a 1,000-yard season. Allen Robinson is the most recent with 1,000-yard seasons in 2019 and 2020.

Mooney has 929 receiving yards this season on 69 catches with four touchdowns. Playing indoors Sunday at Minnesota's U.S. Bank Stadium seems like it might help his chance to reach 1,000.

100 straight? If Bears receiver Allen Robinson makes a catch Sunday against Minnesota, he will have made a reception in all 100 NFL games he has ever appeared in. His 99 straight games with at least one catch is currently the second-longest such streak behind DeAndre Hopkins' 136 consecutive.

During that 99-game streak, there have been only seven games where Robinson caught just 1 pass, and only two in his four seasons in Chicago.