A few numbers indicating positives to coach Matt Eberflus are nice but a real turnaround depends on beating a good NFC North team like the Detroit Lions.
It almost sounded as if Bears coach Matt Eberflus decided to put up a defense of his rebuild with numbers he put out Monday at Halas Hall.
There have been positive trends within the last six Bears games, possibly undetected by the bottom-line bunch on social media and the regular media.
Whether this really does constitute a movement toward future success is debatable. Eberflus brought these numbers up to the team during a meeting earlier on Monday.
“You know, during the last six games we’re 3-3,” he said. “The three wins that we did have, the positivity of that was, you know, we had zero turnovers in those games and the turnover margin was plus-5. And that’s a big reason why we won for those football games.
“And the sack numbers were good on both sides too. So that was a good thing to look at.”
Defensive strides made definitely stand out above the offensive side because they didn’t have quarterback Justin Fields in 4 1/2 of those six games. They also didn’t have running back Khalil Herbert.
However, the defense had the longest way to go, considering the offense at least had a dominant running attack already working on its side.
Limiting points is where it’s all at on defense and the Bears did this. They gave up 24 or less in five of the six games.
“You know, we’ve been fourth in the league during that time,” he said. “The run offense and run defense again has been third and first in the league. And then the third-down percentages are really good, both in the top 10 during those games, and that was the reason why we were in most of those games and had a chance to win three of those and a chance to win the fourth and potentially another one there as well. But that was really good there as well.”
These are all legitimate statistics signifying Bears improvement and it’s easy to take it back one more game to seven and include the loss to Denver, but that finish wasn’t part of the way the team has performed in the six subsequent games.
At the same time there are numbers indicating problems remain and a turnaround is still debatable.
Scoring
It’s only the most important number and the Bears had 40 against Washington, 30 against the Raiders, but in none of the other games in this stretch of six brought up by Eberflus did they score more than 17 points. They were without their starting quarterback for 4 1/2 games, but that didn’t stop Minnesota from winning two games with a backup brought in from another team and immediately thrown into the mix.
Turnovers
While it’s true the Bears have a plus-5 turnover ratio in the three games they won during the six-game stretch, what he left off was they are minus-8 in turnover ratio in the three games they lost. What they need to do is increase the number takeaways overall and decrease their own turnovers. This is pretty basic stuff.
Passing Issues
In the five games since DJ Moore gained 230 yards receiving against the Commanders, they haven’t been able to get him more than the 58 yards he had Thursday night. Not only that, but Darnell Mooney had only 14 total catches in the six games. When they got rid of Chase Claypool—who has one catch since his first appearance with the Dolphins Oct. 22—it seemed they should have more receptions by Mooney and Moore. Instead, it went the other way.
Opposition
The numbers Eberflus mentioned did not really account for who they put them up against. This matters.
If the Bears had produced those numbers over a stretch of games including the opponents they face in their next three games, it might be time to start planning future “Club Dubs,” or whatever they call their post-game celebrations these days.
However, Denver, Washington, the L.A. Chargers, Las Vegas, New Orleans and Carolina don’t exactly constitute a group of Super Bowl challengers. When the Bears played the Vikings, both of them had one win. None of the other teams own a winning record, although the Saints do lead their division with a .500 record.
The Bears produced numbers indicating better play, especially three wins in six weeks after starting with four straight losses.
However, the better numbers came against average to mediocre competition.
If they want to impress someone, they might consider starting by beating a good team Sunday in Detroit to end an 11-game NFC North losing streak.
