Passing Game Progressed But Is It Enough?

Analysis: Justin Fields and the Bears passing attack have built momentum in the second half of the season and the next step is scoring more points with it, but the big question is whether this will make a difference for the coaching staff.

It's definitely too late to mean anything for the Bears this season in terms of a nice win total.

It seems likely it's too late too mean much for the future of Matt Nagy and the coaching regime, although this is yet to be determined.

But don't look now: The Bears are figuring out how to pass the ball.

The numbers say as much and these are not deceiving figures.

A few games might be an aberration. One quarterback doing it but not the other could disprove this trend.

Yet, both quarterbacks have played and done it over the last five games. Even more impressive, they've done it for much of the time without Allen Robinson and part of it without Marquise Goodwin.

About six weeks ago Bears offensive coordinator Bill Lazor made an admission in all of his usual brutal honesty.

"When you run the ball this much, certain people are happy about it," Lazor said, when the Bears were all-run and no pass. "But we're not happy when you don't score the points. And usually in this league passing production leads to more points."

Then he added: "Until we get the passing game to produce better, we're gonna have a hard time."

It should get easier now as the numbers suggest

In the last five games, the Bears have averaged 255.2 passing yards a game and haven't had a single game under 210 yards. They averaged 109 yards rushing. In the first eight games they averaged 127.4 yards passing per game and 136.6 rushing.

The bad news is the offense still struggles to score, but there have been more instances of point production surging.

The 23 points on offense against Green Bay was a big total. Adding in the punt return TD, it was their highest point total against the Packers since 2007.

They had a similar outburst against Pittsburgh in the second half.

In the first six games they averaged only 246.2 yards of offense. In the last seven it's been 351 yards, and they haven't had a day below 311 yards.

Nagy traces it largely to Fields' improvement, although the only win in the last five games came with Andy Dalton at quarterback.

Nagy sees three parts to Fields' game coming together, and the main key is how he has improved at going through his targets.

"So that part of his game, when he stays within the progressions and then the second part of that is using his legs and then being smart is the third part—not taking extra hits," Nagy said. "Knowing when to get up and out, that's going to be a big-time growth for him.

"So when he has that and defensive coordinators know that, that's scary. Ya know? That's scary because he can make some special throws. He does that. He's proven it. But now when you throw that element of using his legs on extended plays, that's hard. That's hard (for defenses). That's going to be a big weapon for him."

The real problem remains getting into the end zone, especially in the red zone. With Fields' legs, it should be easier to score there for the Bears than it has been.

Fields missed a chance to get an open TD pass to a wide-open Robinson in the Packers game when he threw it instead to Cole Kmet for an incompletion on third down before the Bear settled for a 23-yard field goal by Cairo Santos to start the scoring.

"He was still kind of moving his feet a little bit," Nagy said of Fields. "And if you go back and watch it on tape, Justin would probably tell you if he just waited a little bit more he might have A-Rob in the back end line, which is OK. We see that.

"That's how Justin is going to learn, is understanding and going through those type of progressions. Collectively, we knew we had to come out of there with six or seven and not three, and that's where we've got to be better."

The yardage is better, the points are only slightly better and it's there were they need to change everything the most. There are four games left to continue this trend or expand on it.

At this point, that continued offensive and Justin Fields progression might be the only thing the coaching staff has going for it in an attempt to save everyone's job.

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