Bears' performance "pretty good" in the Battle of Tampa Bay brings the identity of the offensive to new heights



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The 48-10 self-immolation of the Bears by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday was not a total surprise, at least not for those inside a Bears locker room who knew what was just going on. below an otherwise calm surface.

"We have never been so far [away]"Said receiver Allen Robinson. "We knew it. It's not a miraculous thing that happened …. We knew we had to really deserve a pretty good offensive performance. "

Good enough. Yes, it was "pretty good".

It was just a match, but it was exactly the same game that an organization wanted to see out of its franchise quarterback and its freshman head coach, who was hired to a large extent because of his offensive roots in football. .

Mitchell Trubisky becoming the first quarterback of the Bears since Johnny Lujack in 1949 to make five touchdown passes in a half, and divide them between five different receivers as part of a 38-point eruption in the first half. Coaching offense Matt Nagy jostled the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for 48 points and 483 yards in a 48-10 victory conceded by the offensive instead of the defense.

"I give it to [coach] Nagy, dude, "said wide receiver Taylor Gabriel. "The different rooms. The diagrams We kind of prepared them all week long and we worked a lot during the week hoping that these pieces were open and that they took place. "

The game was marked by five different players who scored 20-yard games or more, including Trubisky with a 26-yard run in the first half. For the first time since December 2016, the Bears had two receivers with more than 100 yards (Tarik Cohen, 121 yards on 7 receptions, Gabriel, 104 yards on 7 receptions). The match marks the first 100-yard performance of Gabriel's five seasons in the NFL.

An offensive in the troubled red zone that had scored only four of his 10 possessions in the 1920s, scored touchdowns on his four possessions at Tampa Bay 20, plus a fifth of 20 of the Buccaneers on a pass to used Josh Bellamy wide.

The handsets surpassed 482 last season against the Cincinnati Bengals and were the biggest production since the 522 in the Indianapolis defeat against the Colts in 2016. Points production was the biggest since 51 goals were tagged against the Tennessee Titans on November 4, 2012.

"We try to understand who we are every day," said Nagy. "And so when we are in the [game] situation is our test, and in practice just a little understanding here – and these different games and concepts.

"So, today was one of those games where everything was set up, and the players were just …. you can simply say how focused they are on the execution and make sure that they have acted correctly when the parts were called. "

That it all came up against one of the worst defenses of the NFL (363 yards by the average allowed by the Buccaneers on arrival in Soldier Field). But 48 points against any NFL team is a feat and represents an exponential jump hoped for by an offense that had often struggled in its first three games by exploiting Nagy's concepts.

Sunday's "concepts" included a shotgun slam with Chase Daniel alongside Trubisky, both quarters with hands extended to take a rifle bullet – a training that Nagy nicknamed "Willie Wonka". who completed the three-yard game in the second quarter for a 35-3 lead at half-time.

Trubisky recorded a fourth consecutive victory, with 171 points in Green Bay, 200 against Seattle, 220 last week in the win against Arizona and a career record of 354 points on Sunday. His six TD passes were one point behind his 12-game total in 2017 and pushed his season total to eight.

Quality, not just quantity

Not insignificantly for an offense that relies on a myriad of moving points, the Bears made a nil turnaround for the first time this season.

It was not so much the amount of points, add-ons or anything else of the offense. This is Trubisky's generally improved thrust accuracy, a level of comfort the second-year quarterback had not shown to his coach's satisfaction in the previous three games. His passing score of 154.6 points was the highest of his career and reached 101.6 points, with a success percentage now reaching 70.0 and an intercept rate falling to 2.3%.

Perhaps the answer lies in an iteration of minus-is-plus. The coaches reduced the number of different games last week and, whether it was directly because of the truncated game list or simply because of increased comfort with a growing experience, Trubisky was a significantly stronger quarterback confident.

And a precise one. Trubisky threw Robinson, throwing the ball as Robinson paused to the corner of the end zone. Specifically, football was precisely where Robinson or no one could reach him, what Robinson did to complete the 14 yard game.

"We just wanted to understand schematically, do we do what's best for this offense?" Said Nagy. "And not necessarily for Mitch. We know what he can and can not handle. So it's really really collectively as a team, and then we want to chat with him – we discussed earlier this week some concepts that he likes, from what suits him. So we still had a lot of things on his plate. We had a lot of leftovers on this sheet of call today, even with our production that we had ".

If an item was missing, it was the impact of Jordan Howard, who scored 25 yards in 11 runs, his lowest total of the season. But the attack yielded 139 rushing yards, with Cohen and Trubisky each rushing for 53 yards. Cohen, Gabriel, Howard and Trubisky all had 10-yard races or more.

Following a positive pattern under Nagy, the first touchdown was the third time in four games that possession was literally taking place. The 75-yard drive culminated in Trufflesky's longest defensive career in the NFL, which now has 16 games.

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