LEARNING TO FLY

Well, I guess everyone was right. The Bears were going to experience a regression when it came to come-from-behind wins this season. No way could they ever match the seven comebacks from last season. 

No, instead the Bears are too busy playing with the lead. 

Gone are the days of Bears under Ben Johnson waiting until the fourth quarter to unleash Caleb Williams onto the universe. Instead, Johnson’s well-oiled machine of death steps off the bus ready to score points.

PLAYING WITH THE LEAD

Heading into Week 7, the Bears led the NFL in offensive plays with the lead at 211, according to NFL Researcher on X. 

The Bears then won the toss for the first time this season against the Patriots and deferred. It gave the Patriots the first five offensive snaps of the game to get even. The defense did its job, though.

Ben Johnson’s offense then went to work and scored on its first drive. The Bears never relinquished the lead after that. So added 61 more plays to the overall tally. Everyone is playing catch up.

ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky shared this on Friday: the Bears have run 505 offensive plays this season. Their opponents have only had 351. The difference (plus-154) for the Bears is the largest for any team through seven games since 1966. 

IT’S A DIFFERENT MINDSET

I think we’re all actively seeing the wheels turning with this in mind for Ben Johnson and Caleb Williams. These guys are aggressive by nature. They want it all every play. You can see the intensity feed off each other through the TV screen. And that is vital to the fight-or-flight mentality you need to complete those miracle comeback wins. There is a chaos to those moments that you either have or you don’t. 

But playing with a lead is a different mentality. It takes poise. It takes calculation. You have to balance risk vs. reward more when you have the lead. 

You can see that in how Johnson calls plays or chooses to take the points or takes risks. And you can see it when Williams is deciding when to squeeze a throw through traffic or fight for that extra yard or throw it out of bounds to live to play another day. 

SEEING RED

The biggest risk decisions happen in the red zone. And the Bears have a lot of those decisions – the most in the NFL by a sizable margin. 

Going into Thursday Night Football, the Bears had run 112 plays inside the red zone. The Arizona Cardinals had the second most, according to Pro Football Focus. 

But you can add nine more to the Bears’ tally after Thursday night.

Leading in the red zone and playing from behind in the red zone require different approaches. 

And the scary part is that Caleb Williams is starting to get comfortable down there. scoring on seven of the Bears’ nine red-zone opportunities since returning from injury over the last two games. 

THE DEFENSE PLAYS HERE, TOO!

Charles “Peanut” Tillman once yelled that at fans at Bears training camp when we kept cheering for touchdowns at Bourbonnais. So let’s not forget about them. This affects them, too. 

For all the questions about this defense going into the season, what we didn’t know was how this team would operate with leads and sometimes sizable ones. 

Well, the answer is aggressive. 

Going into Week 7, the defense was stunningly ranked fifth in the NFL in sacks with 17. And defensive coordinator Dennis Allen is doing that by getting very creative with a very talented and a very banged-up secondary unit. 

Kyler Gordon alone was able to tie the team lead in sacks after just 25 or so snaps on defense this season. 

Let’s think about that! The Bears are able to be aggressive and send these blitz packages because of the scoreboard. Last year, this defense was holding on to dear life for three quarters until the offense would wake up. Not anymore. The Bears added three more sacks to their tally in Thursday night’s win.

40 BURGERS

The Bears are putting a new spin on the term. Twice, the Bears offense has held the ball for over 40 minutes in a game, with two more hovering around 35 minutes. 

That kind of ball control has a trickle-down effect. 

The Patriots did everything they could to fight against that as both teams were nearly even in time of possession late into the fourth quarter. But things changed in the fourth quarter alone, too. The Bears offense held the ball for 12 minutes, 21 seconds and ran 24 plays to the Patriots’ 8. Like a heavyweight boxer leaning on his opponent in the corner, the Bears took control.

IDENTITY

Ben Johnson told the media at Halas Hall a couple of weeks ago that he knew that his team was poised. That stood out to me. And you’re seeing that play out in a multitude of ways. It’s how they respond to losses, how they respond to teams rallying, how they respond to devastating injuries. It’s how they respond to the noise. 

They are responding with poise. 

And that’s exactly what you need when you’re playing with the lead.