They finished last season pounding the ball on the ground in victories over New England and Detroit, 65 runs in those games combined. They talked all off-season about their determination to return to the run as the No. 1 principle of their offense.
Now, after one-eighth of their season, the Bears are officially the worst running team in the NFL. Even their first .500 record in a couple of years is not enough to allay all concerns over what ultimately must be the core of their offense.
“I could sit here and say it’s this or that,” said offensive coordinator John Shoop. “We’re simply not getting it done.”
Rushing does matter. Four of the top five teams in rushing yardage this season are 2-0. Then again, No. 4 Buffalo is 0-2.
But the reality is that the Bears’ dismal 2001 rushing statistics–worst per-game average at 51.5 yards, second-worst per-carry average at 2.2 yards–don’t tell the whole story. They’re 1-1. That is the statistic they look at.
“We didn’t run the ball as well as we wanted,” said Shoop after Sunday’s 17-10 victory over Minnesota. “We didn’t pass the ball as well as we wanted. We left some yards out there in the passing game as well. But there’s no asterisk next to this win and I’m sure not going to apologize for a win in the NFL, especially against the Vikings. We won the game and that’s our goal each week.”
And the Bears did run the ball against Minnesota.
Not in the first quarter. Not even in the first half. But in a style reflecting the change with Shoop as coordinator, the Bears kept running the ball into the fourth quarter even though they were behind. The passing of Jim Miller overshadowed the fact that the Bears methodically kept after Minnesota and the Vikings finally broke.
James Allen averaged 2.2 yards in 11 carries through three quarters. Then, with the game riding on every carry, he averaged 5.2 in four runs in the fourth quarter. Not counting Miller twice taking a knee for minus-2 yards to run out the clock, the Bears averaged 4.2 yards per carry in the second half.
“I really felt that we ran the ball effectively enough in the second half against Minnesota,” said coach Dick Jauron. “Not as well as we’d like to run it, but effectively enough that our play-action did affect them. As long as we’re doing those things, we’ll be OK.”
Indeed, a more revealing statistic about the offense in general, and Allen specifically, is that he ranks fifth in the NFL among running backs in receiving with 10 catches.
Other realities make the Bears’ anemic ranking an incomplete story.
In Week 1 the Bears played the Baltimore Ravens, who even after a stunning loss to the Cincinnati Bengals still rank No. 1 in the NFL against the run.
The Vikings blitzed to stop the run so effectively in the first half that two Bears linemen said it seemed like the Vikings knew the plays before the ball was snapped.
That changed when players and coaches did some soul-searching at halftime, after which the offense ran the ball six times (one run was called back) and passed seven times in the third quarter.
Then in the fourth quarter each of the Miller touchdown passes was preceded by an Allen run, the 24-yard throw to Marcus Robinson by two.
“We talk about making progress,” Allen said. “We set the standard for ourselves, and everybody in the city has seen it. Anything less than the second half against Minnesota, we just can’t accept that.”
