Sounds like Nagy was tipping his plays.
Save for a handful of plays, nothing went right for the Bears’ offense in their season opener against the Packers. Pick your favorite adjective to describe the performance, but they were simply out-coached and out-played.
Since September is the new August in the NFL, it’s now a matter of where they go from here. They need to ask hard questions in their meeting rooms and put the corrective actions into play on the practice field. Mental and physical resolve separate winners from losers. The Bears definitely have the pieces to be the former, but they need to do some soul-searching and self-scouting during the extra time they have before they head to Denver.
Eighteen games into the Matt Nagy era, I’m still unsure of this team’s offensive identity. What do they do well? What is their go-to scheme when they need a crucial few yards to get a fresh set of downs, or score points near the end zone? Those answers need to be identified. Quickly.
After poring over the tape, it’s evident to me — and certainly was to Green Bay defensive coordinator Mike Pettine — that Nagy has some formation tendencies the league is picking up on. Teams also recognize that the game is still too fast for quarterback Mitch (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky. Pettine masterfully disguised coverages, simulated pressures to manipulate pass-protection checks and forced (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky to try and beat them with his arm from the pocket.
Thursday’s game also produced one of the most telling quotes I’ve heard about the Bears’ young signal caller to date.
”We wanted to make Mitch ((Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky) play quarterback,” Packers cornerback Tramon Williams said. “We knew they had a lot of weapons. We knew they were dangerous. We knew all of those things. We knew if we could make Mitch ((Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky) play quarterback, we would have a chance.”
Before I get to the two trends that stuck out to me, here are some additional thoughts and data — from my own charting — you won’t get from reading the box score.
• Nagy used 32 different personnel packages against the Packers. Their most common personnel groupings were “11” (one running back, one tight end, three wide receiver) and “20” (two running backs, no tight ends, three receivers), at 24 snaps apiece. Their most productive personnel grouping was “21” personnel (two running backs, one tight end, two receivers), which gained 104 yards and four first downs on 17 plays (6.11 yards per play average).
• The most productive personnel package was David Montgomery, Tarik Cohen, Adam Shaheen, Allen Robinson and Taylor Gabriel. In seven snaps, that group generated 45 yards and two first downs.
• The most common personnel package was Cohen, Mike Davis, Robinson, Gabriel and Cordarelle Patterson. But on eight snaps, this group gained only 11 yards, one first down and was sacked twice on eight snaps.
• Cohen was on the field for 49 snaps, lining up in the slot or out wide for 44 of them. The Bears played with multiple running backs on 59 percent of their snaps. His usage as a receiver is expected, but I anticipate this volume dropping once Anthony Miller is back to full health. Miller played 18 offensive snaps, getting just one target, yet they had him on the kickoff coverage team.
• Montgomery generated two of the Bears’ five first-quarter first downs; two others came by penalty and the other a (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky scramble. It’s impossible to reconcile how Montgomery only got two more touches for the remaining three quarters. He made a 27-yard catch in the third quarter, which tied the Bears’ longest play from scrimmage. The touches they gave to Davis need to shift to Montgomery.
• Bobby Massie and Charles Leno Jr. struggled on the edges. Massie in particular had a tough time with Za’Darius Smith, giving ground on bull rushes.
The Bears got mugged
Pettine picked on James Daniels, who made his first NFL start at center, and (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky, who is still learning how to identify the middle linebacker (the “Mike ID”) to set the protection. Putting two players in the A-gap (the space between the center and guards) forces the offensive line to make their protection call and account for those two players given their close proximity to the quarterback.
Former Bears center Olin Kreutz told me that once the “point is set” (the middle linebacker is identified and the responsibility of the offensive line) that there is no freelancing by the offensive line. They have to stay with their assignments. Pettine frequently got the Bears to slide away from where the pressure actually came from, which generated issues for (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky in the pocket.
On this example, the Packers show a pre-snap, six-man pressure. The Bears’ protection call is to slide to the left, meaning Daniels is turning to the left to form a three-man blocking surface to that side. To the right, the protection is Kyle Long, Bobby Massie and Davis. The Packers actually send only four, with three coming from the right side of the offensive line. Daniels and Cody Whitehair punch air, while Long looks right and misses Blake Martinez, who streaks through the A-gap unblocked for an easy third-down sack.
By my count, the Packers used a mug look on 10 snaps, generating two sacks for -17 yards. On the other eight plays, the Bears completed three of four passes for three yards and one (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky scramble for seven yards. The Bears never figured out how to handle the mug look, so you can safely assume this will be a pressure package used by future opponents given its success.
R-P-Oh, I know which play is coming
The Bears went heavy with run-pass option (RPO) calls against the Packers. There’s only one problem: they tip when the play is coming from a formation tendency.
Here are three separate RPO calls from the game. See if you can figure out what the tell is for the defense.
Did you pick up on it? More often than not, when the Bears have the running back offset to the trips side of the formation, they’re running an RPO concept. (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky reads the conflict player — if he crashes down to the ball carrier, he’ll pull the ball and throw. If the defender sits back in coverage, he’ll give to the running back, who’s running away from the passing strength.
By the second-half of the game Pettine figured this out and started blitzing from the slot with rookie Darnell Savage, exchanging the coverage behind it to handle the trips. Savage is quick enough to either catch (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky in the pocket should he try to run, or close down on him if he’s going to throw and speed up the timing of the route. That adjustment from Pettine worked like a charm and this scheme was sniffed out.
Down the stretch of the game, Savage blitzed four times from the slot. On these blitzes, the Bears completed just one pass for 9 yards, but (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky also threw his fatal interception to Robinson in the corner of the end zone. That particular play wasn’t an RPO concept, but they relentlessly pressured off the slot from trips and played tight coverage behind it.
Seeing that RPOs have been a comfort package for (Pro Bowl QB) Trubisky when he’s not in a groove, Nagy has to do some self-scouting to adjust these tendencies. If not, the league is going to start taking these away, which would be detrimental to the success of the offense.
(Top photo: Nuccio DiNuzzo / Getty Images)
https://theathletic.com/1198089/2019/09 ... breakdown/
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