Bears May Have to Live a Little Dangerously on Defense to Beat the Packers. But Just a Little.

Dan Pompei at the Chicago Tribune answers your questions:

“What are the Bears going to do to slow down Greg Jennings? R.A. Pickett, Houston

“Jennings is a difficult player to slow down. That’s why he made the Pro Bowl and had a 1,200 yard season. The Bears could devote more defensive attention to Jennings, but the problem is if you do that, the Packers have many other weapons to hurt them with. The best way to play Jennings is probably with a healthy dose of zone coverage with a safety over the top. That’s what I would expect Sunday, but Ron Jaworski of ESPN tells me that in the last game between these teams, the Bears played with one safety high 60 percent of the time. I’m not so sure they can get by living so dangerously Sunday.”

I’m not surprised.  The Bears have played much more aggressive defense over the last month.

There’s little doubt that the Bears need to play a healthy dose of cover two on Sunday.  But, as they’ve learned the last couple years, they can’t just sit back in it all game.  Pressure or not it’s simply too easy to pick it apart if you know its coming every time.

The Bears can and probably play zone most of the game.  But they need to continue to disguise their coverages and in order to do that, they need to play at least some man-to-man.  Its been hard for me to tell for sure but to my eye they’ve played at least a little quarters coverage as well and continuing to throw that in a minority of the time isn’t a bad idea.

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