Chicago’s Identity Crisis: No run game, No run defense

Ariana Pensy · Correspondent · 10 hours ago

CHICAGO - Two things the Chicago Bears have been known for throughout their history are their running game and their aggressive defense. The Bears sit at 2-2 heading into the bye week, yet they lack a rushing offense and have the worst run defense in the league.

The run defense is historically bad. Through the first four games, Chicago’s defense is allowing an average of 6.1 yards per carry (YPC). If that becomes their season average, or even if their average decreases by 0.5 yards, this would be the most YPC a Chicago Bears defense has given up since at least 1933, when rushing yards given up by a team were tracked consistently. Furthermore, the Bears have finished a season giving up at least five YPC in less than five years in their over 100-year history.

This metric is obviously a little inflated, given the Bears just gave up 240 rushing yards to rookie running back Ashton Jeanty and the Las Vegas Raiders in their last game. That is actually the most rushing yards the Bears have given up in a single game since December of 2023 against the Arizona Cardinals.

Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that this season also marks the first time since 2011 that Chicago has given up at least 100 rushing yards in the first four games of the season. However, that year, the Bears turned things around and finished the year as a top-10 defense. While that is obviously something the Bears would like to do this year, they also never had a game in 2011 where they gave up at least 200 rushing yards. Right now, they are giving up an average of 164.5 rushing yards per game.

Just how bad this run defense is has not been lost on head coach Ben Johnson. Going into the game against Las Vegas, one of their biggest goals was to stop the run and that did not happen.

Going into the bye week, that is something that hopefully will be addressed, so that Chicago does not have these struggles for the remainder of the season, or at least not to the magnitude they are currently.

“The biggest thing that we missed this week was our run defense. We really felt like this was a week we needed to get back on track in that regard. But other than that, we hit on the turnovers. We hit on being great in our situational football. We were excellent in critical downs, two-minute situations and so, even though we missed on one of the big ones for us here this week, the other ones came through for us in a big way. So, end of the day, the most important thing is limiting the opposing offense in the number of points scored and so, if that means that we’re giving up some rushing yards but yet we’re keeping them low on the scoreboard, we’ll manage with that,” Johnson said. “No one likes to see six yards, seven yards per carry. That’s not what Chicago Bears football is about. That’s not what we want to be about and so, we’re working very diligently on getting better in that regard. I think the most important thing that we’re looking at as a staff and as players is how do we get better at some of our fundamentals? We’re not shedding blocks to the degree we’d like to yet or at least as consistently as we’d like to yet and we’re not making tackles in space as well as we’re capable of. We did enough live tackling over the course of training camp, I thought we’d be a little further along in that regard in the first four games and so, still a work in progress. Like anything, you look at something where you might be a little bit deficient. You make it a point of emphasis and then I know our guys will take that to heart and they’ll respond.”

What is worse than not being able to stop the run? The answer - when you cannot stop the run and you also cannot run the football. Chicago’s offense has struggled to run the ball almost as much as its defense has struggled to stop the run.

Johnson does not believe this is a reflection of running back D’Andre Swift but rather a reflection on the offense overall.

“I don’t think our running struggles were a reflection of D’Andre Swift. I think he’s a guy that continues to run the ball very hard even though the yards per carry aren’t where any of us want it to be right now. He’s as frustrated as anybody right now. He’s very prideful in what he can do and what he brings to the table and I don’t feel like everybody on offense yet is pulling their weight and that’s myself included,” Johnson said. “There’s a number of things from (Sunday’s) game I have to do a better job of. There’s a couple calls I was getting in late. There’s a couple things that the coaching staff, myself, we could have coached up better to give us a better chance there and then there were some things just execution-wise that we knew what we were going to do. But, the techniques, the fundamentals, (we) didn’t adhere to them when we needed to and so, when you look at it as a whole, it was a mess man. I’m just not proud of what we put on tape. I think it’s a reflection of myself. I always take it personally. I saw us getting better the first three weeks and in a lot of ways on offense and then this was just a little bit of a stepback for us.”