Post by legendsofthenorth on Dec 22, 2021 21:11:00 GMT -6
It was a win but not a proud day. Yeah let's put that one behind us quickly.
I believe that the Bears had only one realistic shot at competing and that was to use the front 7 to get pressure and to use the back 4 to keep everything in front of them and not get beat over the top. They did this as well as they could and our OL was no match for the pressure they applied.
The Vikings, seeing this was the case still tried to run straight up the middle even though Cole and Bradbury were overmatched. And we still ran too many intermediate and deep patterns even though we could not provide Kirk with the time needed to make the throws.
The correct way to counter that would be to start running more pitches to the outside to get the defense running laterally so they got tired quicker and couldn’t just run over the blockers. And then more screens where they let the defenders rush and pass the ball over them to cook and the TE. That’s the way you beat a strong pass rush. Running straight into the strength of that defense was foolish and yielded nothing.
I love your second paragraph. However, I liked how they kept running straight at them. I know crazy right? I am not provided their game plan but I am assuming a few things they were trying to accomplish
1. First and foremost, stay ahead of the chains to provide short 3rd down opportunities. They knew they would not be able to hold upon the OL on long 3rd downs for Kirk. Which was true
2. If you run those outside plays, that's where they get a lot of their holding penalties (see above putting them in too much down and distance)
3. I think they knew first one to 20 probably wins the game. Neither got there obviously but they did enough
4. This is the first game plan I saw that looked a little Belichek like in "here is how we are going to win"
5. The only time I feel they got out of their plan was trying to score at the end of the half. I think they should have just ran out the clock there
... and neither is this Chris guy.