It depends on who you ask about it at Halas Hall.
If you ask Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson, the buck stops with him. He has to do more of a job to get the running game going.
“I need to call more runs,” Johnson said this week.
If you ask Bears running back D’Andre Swift, he tipped his cap to the Vikings’ defense that kept the run game in check.
“They did a good job, Minnesota did, of showing us different things, different looks. It was kind of muddy early on, trying to take what was there, that’s what I kind of felt throughout the whole game,” Swift said. “We just got to find a way to execute better.”
No matter who you ask about Monday’s run game woes, there’s a bottom line: The Bears need to be able to run the ball better than what they did against Minnesota.
By the numbers:
On Monday Night Football, the Bears rushed for 119 yards on 26 carries.
Six of those carries were by quarterback Caleb Williams. None of those six carries were designed runs; they were plays where Williams scrambled for yards.
After Monday’s loss to the Vikings, where better play in one phase of the game might have lead to a win, it becomes more imperative the Bears need to find success on the ground.
“Running the ball is always a privilege,” Bears offensive coordinator Doyle said. “You come out and you’re efficient, more of them are going to get called. We’ve got to take a better advantage of those opportunities when they’re presented early in the game to keep that rolling.”
Swift got 17 carries on Monday. Wide receiver DJ Moore got three. Rookie Kyle Monongai didn’t get one carry and third-year back Roschon Johnson was inactive with an injury.
With Roschon out of the game, the Bears should have turned more to Monongai, who could have provided a change of pace. Ben Johnson noted this earlier in the week, knowing the numbers needed to more even.
“We, probably, were at under 20 for called-runs for the game,” Ben Johnson said. “I need to call more so that we get him in the game a little bit more.
Part of the reason for the lack of runs was how the Bears fell behind in the fourth. That meant the offense needed to throw to preserve time and to move in a hurry.
However, the dual-threat aspect that Williams has worked. After that, it’s about getting more out of the running backs.
What should help this week is Roschon is healthy. Now that Ben has an eye on improving the running game, having more options could open up the playbook more with different styles of running backs at his disposal.
However, none of that matters unless the running game clears one massive hurdle.
Big picture view:
On offense, the Bears committed seven penalties against Minnesota. In all, Chicago was flagged 12 times against the Vikings.
Four of those flags were false starts. Two were holding calls. But, the hold Monongai committed was declined by the Vikings.
Those penalties held the Bears back.
“It is tough to kind of get everything going when you have a penalty here, false start there, negative plays,” Swift said. “It just kind of throws the whole rhythm of the game plan off. So if we play cleaner ball, we should get better looks and sustain better drives.”
Going backwards without even running a play is something that limits the run game. Doyle went further with his assessment, though.
Those offensive flags cost the Bears the game.
“That’s something that can never happen,” Doyle said. “That really was the story of the game. We would put ourselves in an efficient down and distance and we would knock ourselves out. I think on three separate occasions we end up knocking ourselves out.”
The killer was the drive to end the third quarter.
The Bears drove down to the Minnesota 24-yard line and had first and five after a Vikings offsides. That turned into third and 30 at the Minnesota 44 after a hold by Darnell Wright, which was an iffy call at best, and an intentional grounding foul on Caleb Williams.
That set the Bears back to where they settled for a 50-yard field goal by Cairo Santos, which Santos missed.
That’s why the objective is a simple one this week for the Bears.
“Being clean, staying on schedule and stuff like that,” Swift said. “That’s what we look forward to do each and every week.”