Two Real Bears Offensive Problems

The long and the short of it for the Bears offense is they can't break enough big plays or pick up the really small, critical ones.

While their defense continues climbing up the stat charts, the Bears head into the final two weeks still seeing specific areas holding back their offense.

They're not keeping up on the offensive side with the progress being enjoyed at pass coverage, pass rush and run defense and it's happening in two particular areas.

For one, they remain rather mundane at rushing the ball on third-and-short plays. With more first downs, they could have more touchdowns.

The other area is getting the ball downfield more as Justin Fields' yards per attempt have dipped to a career low of 6.7 with four straight games of 6.8 yards or less.

That's about the long and the short of it.

The Bears had a 53-yard completion and 29-yard completion to Cole Kmet against Arizona but it didn't help when Kmet went out with an injury and DJ Moore was already injured. Still, this was just one game and this has been a trend as they've yard yards per attempt of 6.3, 4.2, 6.8 and 5.9 in the last four games. Teams need to be up in the 7s at least to be effective.

"I would just say we've gotta keep getting after it, just keep doing it and keep taking out shots and keep making those connections," coach Matt Eberflus said Tuesday. "Hopefully these next two games we will, we will make those connections with DJ, with the guys that go down the field, (Darnell) Mooney and different guys, and Cole's done a good job with that, too. We've just gotta keep doing it.”

The lack of bigger connections is part of the reason the Bears have had less than 200 net passing yards in nine of their last 10 games. Their deeper passing hasn't connected even though it's supposed to be a Fields strength.

"But we have to continue to do that because I know how hard it is defensively speaking," Eberflus said. "Because when you do that, you back guys up. And that opens up the intermediate passing game."

They'd get more opps with more first downs, courtesy of short-yardage runs. They're not horrible at this but with a running quarterback they would seem to have a natural advantage and it doesn't show as they're 15th in the league percentage-wise at converting third-and-1 runs.

They have converted 10 of 14 times on third-and-1 but more troubling than their rank is the fact they've been better converting third-and-2 (72.73%) than on third-and-1 runs (71.4%).

“Yeah, no doubt," Eberflus said. "We have to do a better job with short yardage. There's no question about that. You have to have a staple, something that you go to.

"It's usually the sneak or the wedge or the rugby, whatever you're calling that, the Philadelphia play (tush push). We've done that a couple times, but we need to be more effective at that. We're looking to be more effective at that, because you need something like that where you can always go to that, and then you need some stuff that hits the perimeter, because teams will load up inside there on you, pack everybody inside and leave themselves vulnerable on the outside."

Eberflus said the offense has these plays.

"I do think you need that, we certainly have that in our arsenal, too," he said. "But it just comes down to execution. It comes down to the guys executing the push play better and also the perimeter plays better."

With a dangerous runner like Fields at quarterback, it would seem those areas should be strengths.

"You want to put it in your guy's hands," Eberflus said. "Justin Fields is one of those guys. DJ is one of those guys. But you have to have some multiplicity to it also."

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