Offense
- The Bears open no huddle to try to get some momentum going. It kind of worked. They got a field goal.
- The Bears were mixing the run and pass pretty well. Lions were not apparently stacking the box against the run and the Bears took advantage and ran pretty well against him. I won’t say the line opened huge holes but there were enough cracks there for David Montgomery to sneak through. The Bears building upon their limited success against the Packers to execute an improved running game was the most encouraging thing to come out of this game. They occasionally did a nice job of executing play action off of it, too. This is their path to success.
- The coaching change didn’t do anything to improve the Lions tackling. It was pretty bad in spots.
- Trubisky still didn’t have great accuracy on some of his throws, especially the ones outside the numbers. But that’s no surprise.
- The Bears offense once again failed to score in the third quarter. I don’t think there’s anything more for me to say here that hasn’t already been said.
- The Lions started to blitz a lot in the second half. Matt Nagy or Bill Lazor or whoever responded with some good play calls to counter it (screens, short passes into the voids in coverage, etc…).
Defense
- Roquan Smith struggled in coverage. In fairness, the Bears expect a lot out of their linebackers. Covering a wide out on a shallow cross from a dead stop is a tough ask.
- Adrian Peterson still looked good at times but I’d say the Bears did a decent job against the run for the most part. Welcome back Akiem Hicks.
- Bears are tackling much better than they were against the Packers. So they appear to have straightened that out in a hurry. The defense did looks very motivated, at least as first, to put that miserable Packers effort behind them.
- The Bears were stunting an awful lot on the defensive front in an effort to get pressure on Matthew Stafford. I don’t think it had much effect. There were stretches where the Bears really struggled to get pressure.
- The Lions started to run the ball better midway through the first quarter. Their line was getting good movement on the Bears up front.
- Some of the Bears pass coverage was pretty bad. It was very loose at times and there was a lot of space for the Lions receivers on some of the plays. I almost wonder if there were some broken coverages out there. Combined with the occasionally poor pass rush, it was an ugly look sometimes.
Miscellaneous
- Kevin Kugler, Chris Spielman and Laura Okmin were your announcers. Okmin always does a good job and Kugler seems to be adequate. But I was underwhelmed by Spielman. I don’t think I learned anything from him.
- Special teams weren’t very special but there isn’t much critical to say. Which probably means good things for both sides.
- Great Cordarrella Patterson return to start the game
- Cairo Santos missed the extra point on the first touchdown. That’s a cheap way to end a consecutive kicks streak.
- Matt Prater missed a rare extra point as well on the Lions first touchdown.
- The Bears were kicking off short all game. I’m not entirely sure why. The coverage was decent and perhaps it made a marginal difference in starting position.
- Drops really didn’t affect the game much.
- There weren’t that many penalties for the Bears but one penalty is all it takes to kill a drive with this offense. The Bears had a drive going midway thorough the third quarter. Holding Charles Leno and the drive was dead. Instead of being up by 13 or 17, they give the Lions life and the ball with more than 7 minutes left. There’s no margin for error with this team.
- One thing Mitch Trubisky had to do with less than 2 minutes left. One thing. Hang on to the damned ball. And he couldn’t do it.
- This is what bad teams with bad quarterbacks do. There were a lot of encouraging things about this game. The run game was good (4.5 yards per carry). The defense limited the Lions to less than 3 yards per carry. Heck, they scored 30 points. But this is what bad teams do.