Defense

1. Atlanta came out executing well. They spread the ball out, balanced the run and the pass. They looked sharp.
2. The Bears played a lot of zone defense hoping to get pressure on Ryan with the front seven. I think we’ll see a lot of this during the year, given the state of the defensive backfield (i.e. not good). I’d say it was occasionally successful but inconsistent depending upon how successful the pass rush was. Atlanta spent a good part of the second quarter picking that zone apart with Julio Jones and Mohamed Sanu. Truthfully the Bears defensive backs were out classed.
3. The Bears did a reasonable job of stopping the run and did a pretty good job at the line of scrimmage. But Atlanta is pretty good with the play action pass and they occasionally got burned with it.
4. Akiem Hicks was the best Bears defensive player on the field. Great game both rushing the passer and penetrating against the run.
5. Was Pernell McPhee on the field at all?
6. I know Leonard Floyd was out there most of the time but… let’s just say you wouldn’t know it from the stat sheet. They need more from him.
7. Hard to figure out what happened on the 88 yard Austin Hooper touchdown in the fourth quarter but it looked like Quintin Demps blew the deep coverage.
8. I didn’t think this was Matt Ryan’s best game. He wasn’t real accurate.
9. There was some awful tackling out there.

Offense

1. Not surprising to anyone who watched the preseason, the Bears came out in a lot of double tight end. Also not surprising, the Falcons responded by stacking the line of scrimmage with a lot of guys in the box. They were keying on the running backs.
2. The Bears played for the first quarter and a half taking what the defense gave them – i.e. the pass. Just one problem. They have the worst wide receiver group in the league. And that was before losing Cam Meredith. The Bears really struggled with short passes that went nowhere.
3. Those passes went nowhere because of the speed on the Atlanta defense. No sooner did a receiver get the ball then he would get hammered. Yards after the catch were at a premium. they got decent pressure on Mike Glennon.
4. The Bears tried to counter the Atlanta speed and aggressiveness with some misdirection plays. I’d say that they had limited success.
5. Here’s the good news. Late in the second quarter the Bears threw up their hands and said, “The hell with this.” They just ran despite the defense. and it worked to give them a touchdown late in the half.
6. Tarik Cohen tore it up with some spectacular runs. Not only is he athletic with excellent vision, he’s short, tough to get a hold of and tough to find behind the line of scrimmage. He and Jordan Howard are a potent one-two punch in the backfield.
7. Give the Bears offensive line some love for some good blocking up front and everyone else, including those miserable wide receivers, credit for doing a good job of contributing as well.
8. Glennon didn’t look good out there but I really can’t fault him. He had some “where was that going?” passes but he’s surrounded by nothing to pass to, was under a fair bit of pressure much of the time and was playing a very good defense.
9. I guess you can’t run the ball on every down but I really thought that they should have done it more, in the second half. I literally cringed in the second half every time I saw a shot gun formation because I knew it was a disaster waiting to happen. I can’t remember ever seeing a team That was less of a threat to throw a ball more than 8 yards. The Falcons just sat o the short routes and caused havoc. It would help if they put Glennon under center more so they could play off of their success running the ball and run a realistic play action pass.
10. Brook Reed had a great game attacking the line of scrimmage for the Falcons.
11. As bad as the receivers are I do wonder if the Bears shouldn’t be getting more out of Kendall Wright. Tight end Dion Sims occasionally looked good, too.

Miscellaneous

1. This was originally the announcing team that was supposed to include Jay Cutler. Without him, there wasn’t much special to pay attention to.Kevin Burkhardt, Charles Davis, Pam Oliver were professional and Davis, in particular, did a reasonable job of hitting all of the important points as far as I was concerned. In fact, for what its worth, he literally said a lot of things as I was thinking them.We certainly could have done worse.
2. The game started with a short kick to the 10 almost put the Bears in the hole right away. A penalty brought the 60 yard return back. Connor Barth kind of redeemed himself a bit later with 54 yd field goal followed be a kick off into the end zone for a touchback.
3. I’d say penalties weren’t outrageously bad on the part of either team. Hicks had a bad roughing the passer penalty in the third quarter. That extended a long drive that ended in a field goal.Not a great game for Cody Whitehair. He had a hands to the face penalty and a holding penalty. He also had a low shotgun snap.
4. There weren’t many drops until the last Bears drive. Kevin White had one on the first play of second half. But the ones that really hurt were the two by Josh Bellamy and Jordan Howard in the waning seconds of the game. Both may have been game winning touchdowns.
5. The Bears didn’t turn the ball over. Perhaps more telling, they didn’t get any, either.
6. It won’t necessarily show up in the stat sheet as being as bad as it was but the Falcons had some really long drives that tired the Bears defense out in the second half.
7. I think the best team won this game. I give the Bears credit for hanging in there with inferior personnel but in the end I think the cream rose to the top.