3 and Out: Monday Night Momentum
Bears closer to being the team they want to be after surprising MNF blowout over Patriots
So this is what its like to be on the other side of dysfunction projected in front of a nationwide audience. Pretty nice.
The Chicago Bears didn’t acquit themselves well in two prior prime-time performances this season, but one more chance came Monday night and the “Monsters” sort of used the element of surprise in overtaking what turned out to be a New England Patriots team ripe for the taking.
In their stunning 33-14 win over the Pats, the Bears looked, in all three phases of football, like the team we hope them to be regularly in years to come — Justin Fields was given a real game-plan, including a dozen designed runs, that he utilized skillfully, showing all the dimensions of his play over the course of the evening as an array of play-makers stepped up in one of Chicago’s most explosive performances in years.
The Bears defense rattled not one, but two Patriots quarterbacks to the tune of four turnovers. H.I.T.S. was well established and the Bears muted one of the league’s best rushing attacks outside of their own, which — going back to the offense — was dominant in ways that teams typically are not against Bill Belichek-led defenses.
And on a night where Belichek could have surpassed “Papa Bear” George Halas on the all-time coaching wins list for No. 2 all-time, the Bears exhibited a certain melding of its historical pride with an encouraging forward movement that probably would have been disorienting to the team’s founder had he been displaced from the time stream and found his way to Gillette Stadium on a foggy late October night in 2022… but after that Jaquan Brisker interception, or one or two of David Montgomery’s bruising runs, he wouldn’t have wanted to leave.
If You’re Zappe and You Know It…
The old adage is if you have two quarterbacks, you really have none. The Patriots painfully lived up to that saying on Monday night and the Bears, to their credit, took advantage of a rare lack of decision from a Belichick-led unit.
After the game, Belichick tried to sell his QB shell game with Mac Jones and Bailey Zappe as the intended plan all week. Jones, who was making his return to action after being sidelined during Week 3 with an ankle injury, has been sold as the future of the franchise, but the rookie Zappe has shown some zip in two starts and a competitive second half against Green Bay.
Zappe came into the game Monday in the second quarter with the game in the Bears’ control, up 10-0. In a dance Bears fans should be all-too familiar with, a previously unheralded back-up was in a position to be a hero for the fans after a disappointing anointed starter flopped (3-of-6 passing, 13 yards, 1 INT).
That second quarter saw Zappe claim the lead for New England with two immediate touchdown drives, but the Bears adjusted and utilized two late second-quarter scores of their own, plus more points early in the third quarter to regain the lead and creep further ahead. In the end, two young Patriots quarterbacks proved themselves not ready for the moment in front of them while the Bears’ quarterback, secure as ever in his position, put on another eye-opening performance on the Monday Night Football stage.
Fields’ numbers weren’t overwhelming Monday, but he did so much more to pass the eye test against New England than he did in the previous two Monday Night games where he showed some promise.
Fields was calmer — even with Matthew Judon and the Patriots’ pass rush a constant presence, as usual for Bears opponents — and more secure in his movements, he got the ball up the field more consistently and he was able to better pick instances to run when plays broke down. Even better than that, the designed runs the Bears offered Fields set the tone for the rushing attack overall, which tallied 243 yards on 45 carries.
JF1 led the team with 82 yards on 14 carries, while Montgomery and Khalil Herbert each plugged in 62 yards on 15 carries and 12 carries respectively. Offensive coordinator Luke Getsy even threw in a nice 29-yard jet sweep with Dante Pettis. NFL.com reported via Next Gen Stats that 63 of Fields’ rush yards came on 12 designed runs, both numbers being career highs. Hopefully both numbers will be surpassed before the end of this season.
“It brought a whole different element to our offense,” Fields said after the game of the designed runs. “We executed that well.”
The play selection and execution was solid all night at the least and only got better as the game went on, leading to the Bears scoring 23 unanswered points to end the game.
Chicago drives were often extended and fulfilled by unprecedented third-down execution for this season. The Bears went 11-of-18 on third down, a 61.1 percentage that greatly surpassed the team’s 35.6% on third for the season entering Week 7.
“Our ability to run the ball and our ability to convert on third down, that’s what we worked on all week during the mini-bye,” coach Matt Eberflus said.
The Patriots were overwhelmed and, for once, the team without answers in a match-up against the Bears.
Controlling the Narrative
So much for the Bears seemed lost and out of their control in the immediate aftermath to their very disappointing 12-7 loss to Washington on Thursday Night Football back on Oct. 13, but with this win the Bears exercised a lot of the bad energy that has infected this season on top of turning over the dominance a team like New England, the most successful NFL franchise of the 21st century so far, has had with them over the past 20 years.
As the Pats feel the heat around their camp in the weeks to come, mostly coming from its emerging QB controversy, the Bears get to slide forward knowing they actually accomplished something this week. Though they did beat what’s seemingly another middling team, matching their wins against another team trying to figure out its quarterback situation (San Francisco) and one that simply doesn’t have a quarterback situation (Houston) among much else.
Things won’t get any easier this coming Sunday at High Noon just outside Dallas. It actually may not take 33 points to beat the Cowboys but their high-powered defense features a young pass rusher in Micah Parsons who some compare to Lawrence Taylor. Much like Judon on Monday, Parsons isn’t the kind of guy we can expect to lay off Fields.
There’s also the natural spotlight that comes with each Cowboys game. Sure, the likes of Stephen A. Smith will be rooting for the Bears (and the subsequent material that would be available to him the next day opposite Michael Irvin), but the spotlight can be too much for a team that isn’t ready — just ask Detroit, who is completely out of any goodwill its “Hard Knocks”-starring preseason afforded them after losing its fourth straight game by a 24-6 score down in AT&T Stadium Sunday afternoon.
On a short week of preparation the Bears won’t have the weight of trying to shed a losing streak of their own in this upcoming game. That’s certainly a good thing, but it also means the ‘Boys will see them coming all the way. Neither a 10-0 start or a 23-0 game-ending run should be in the cards for the Bears this weekend.
They’ll likely be in for a fight, but be it via the run attack, the defensive play-making of Roquan Smith, Brisker and Kyler Gordon, and even the steady kicking of Cairo Santos, the Bears have ways to H.I.T. opponents and make them feel it.
Chicago >>> Boston
The NBA scheduling the Chicago Bulls and Boston Celtics on this Monday night was a tasty bit of counter-programming and risky for both sports-crazed cities. The distinct chance of one-sided domination was in the air all night.
Usually these things don’t play out well for Chicago — Boston, with its own much-tortured sports history, might have felt the same, but they couldn’t have felt like underdogs in the Pats-Bears run-up (Vegas said -8.5 in their favor) and the Celtics, just coming off an Eastern Conference championship and reveling in a 3-0 start to this new season, had to feel like they could handle the 1-2 Bulls. Well…
And this is after the Cs built a 19-point lead in the first quarter. There was a short time during the evening with the Celtics up and “Zappe Hour” taking place at Foxborough where the familiar smell of disappointment was sticking in Bulls and Bears’ fans noses, but by 9:30 (central time) the Bulls were sending folks home happy from the United Center and the second half Bears takeover was in full effect.
Sure, this section’s subhead doesn’t really need to be said, but it’s always nice to get some reinforcement. It’s all love though, Beantown, you still got the right version of clam chowder. And Bobby Brown is still standing. In the meantime…
Follow Kyle Means on Twitter (@meansmatters); Follow WARR Media (We Are Regal Radio) on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram