Takeaways Mean Total Effort for Bears Defense

With four takeaways and only 70 rushing yards allowed, Roquan Smith and the Bears defense felt they played their most complete game this year.

The Bears had been 12th in scoring defense and have played the pass well almost all season.

Yet, safety Jaquan Brisker said something was missing.

The missing element was a complete defensive effort, and they finally got one Monday night in a 33-14 win over the New England Patriots.

"It felt good," Brisker said. "We played a whole complete game from the first quarter to the fourth quarter.

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"If we keep going like this, everybody keeps doing their job, we are just getting warmed up, building our chemistry up, and we’re just going to keep going."

Brisker started it by leaping to make a spectacular one-handed interception of Mac Jones before the Patriots regular starter left the game early in the second quarter in favor of Bailey Zappe.

The interception triggered a four-turnover avalanche on the night for the Bears defense, including interceptions by Roquan Smith and Kyler Gordon, and a recovery by Justin Jones of a missed handoff from Zappe. It was the first career interceptions for Gordon and Brisker.

"I saw two receivers going vertical so I just tried to split the difference," Brisker said. "When he actually threw the ball, I was kind of surprised and I just capitalized on it."

That was the first of a season-high four takeaways caused by the Bears.

"A lot of swagger, but, we went into the game with a lot of focus on capitalizing on turnovers," Brisker said. "Earlier in the season we weren't capitalizing or causing turnovers so we just had to focus on that today."

Perhaps the best part of the complete defensive effort was controlling the running game. They gave up only 70 yards on 19 carries, a season-low rushing total. But it came against a team that prides itself on running the ball well.

"I honestly felt like we took over the entire game," linebacker Roquan Smith said. "If you think about the plays they got, they only got the one go ball, the 'oh crap' play, and a busted play on the running back swing play.

"Other than that, they really didn't do too much. We knew if we stuck to what we do and played within our scheme, good things would happen."

The "oh crap" play was the 30-yard TD pass by Zappe to Jakobi Meyers but after the 14 points scored, the Bears defense completely shut the door.

After that, it was the Patriots offense saying "oh crap" for the rest of the night.

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