2020 Week 4: Chicago Bears 11, Indianapolis Colts 19

By Kevin Schroeder
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Updated: October 8, 2020

Chicago Bears wide receiver Allen Robinson catches a touchdown pass against the Indianapolis Colts

At least he showed up. (Photo credit: Mike Dinovo, USA TODAY Sports)

Player Grades

The grading scale goes from -3 to +3 for each play. Screens are graded as runs. Penalties are counted in whatever phase they were committed. Pre- and post-snap penalties are in the “Misc.” column. “Short” throws are 10 yards or less, “Medium” is 10-20, “Deep” is over 20. Everything else (scrambles, throwaways, reads, etc.) is under “Miscellaneous.” Parentheses in a column denote grades/snaps from the opposite side of the ball and are not included in grades/snaps from the player’s usual side. Snap counts are from Pro Football Reference. Box score and other relevant info can be found at that link as well.

So, what happened?

Did you not see that offensive line chart? Here it is again.

That. That’s what happened. The run blocking stunk and pass pro was a disaster. Easily the unit’s worst outing of the year and watching the game live, I thought that the grades were going to turn out even worse, particularly in the ground game. Upon re-watch, David Montgomery gets a much larger share of the blame than I thought watching live. He blew multiple opportunities to pickup yards because he either didn’t see holes available or wasn’t patient enough to let them open. Not that the line wasn’t bad; make no mistake, it was. Only Daniels and Whitehair graded out positively in the run game, and even then, when the nature of the position is taken into account, their grades are effectively zero, give or take. Part of this lousiness comes from the Bears’ insistence of cutting guys on the backsides of zone runs. I talked about this at some length last week; the tl;dr version is “It’s not working and the concept doesn’t make sense to begin with, so knock it off.” Half the time, guys totally whiff and the other half, they just clog up a potential cutback lane. I asked Tom Blazer, a Twitter pal and offensive line coach out in California, about this and he wasn’t sure, either. If you’re reading this and have the ear of anyone with press clearance, please get them to ask Castillo about this. It’s become my mission for the year to find out what in the world the point of this is.

Anywho, joining Montgomery and the line in the big box o’ lousiness is Jimmy Graham, who routinely blew blocking assignments.

More Cole Kmet, please

Yes, that’s where I was going. Settle down. Folks were asking after the game why Demetrius Harris was getting more snaps than Kmet. Watching live, I thought the answer seemed obvious – Harris gives you more in the passing game right now and I’ve generally liked his blocking to this point. Upon re-watch, I am joining the chorus clamoring for Kmet. Kmet was the only tight end executing his blocks and I have to imagine he could be at least as effective as Graham has been in the passing game if given a chance.

Twitter said the play calling sucked. What say you?

I thought the opening drive was too conservative. That’s my only real gripe. Nagy tried establishing the run, that went poorly for reasons already discussed. When the run’s not working, defenses aren’t going to bite on playaction, thus, Nagy didn’t bash his head against that particular brick wall. Then there were some good play calls ruined by lousy execution, none more galling than this one:

This “Seattle” call from the #Bears game says a lot — Seattle uses the yellow routes to open up the red route against Cover 2. It works, ARob is open!… but Harris doesn’t slice across the line to block #97, so the play dies.

You can even see Harris apologize after the play. pic.twitter.com/FSUdHwoFQW

— Robert Schmitz (@robertkschmitz) October 7, 2020

Robinson dropped a pass on an RPO. Foles’s interception came on a drop by Anthony Miller on a Gun Trio Levels Y Sail call that the Bears had wide open. Nagy controlled what he could control and was more or less fine.

And on defense?

I wasn’t happy with the touchdown allowed on the Colts’ opening drive. After that, the defense locked in. Four field goals the rest of the way. They also produced four three-and-outs, significant because coming into the game, the Colts hadn’t had one all year. The run defense was especially impressive, those guys should all pat themselves on the back. This could have been a really rough day for the Bears given the state of the run defense to that point sans Eddie Goldman and the quality of the Colts’ offensive line and not only was this not a disaster, the Bears held the Colts’ running backs to 107 yards on 35 carries, just over 3 YPC. Nice job, guys.

What does this mean going forward?

What more needs to be said about Tom Brady? Nine trips to the Super Bowl, 6 rings, at or near the top of a bunch of career passing stats lists. Is he the guy he was 10 years ago? Nope, but he’s still getting the job done. This past Sunday, he led the Bucs on a big comeback against the Chargers. That said, he also threw a pick-six and will be without O.J. Howard, who was just placed on season-ending IR, Chris Godwin, LeSean McCoy, and Justin Watson for sure, Leonard Fournette is doubtful, and Mike Evans hasn’t practiced all week. The name of the game once again this week is “get to the QB.” Brady is far from a speedster and has gotten more rattled by pressure as he’s gotten older. My concern is that Brady will be able to take advantage of the Bears over the middle of the field and with running backs out of the backfield, two concepts the Bears struggles to stop against the Colts. On offense, the Bears will again face a strong front seven, but this one doesn’t have quite as strong of a secondary behind it. The Bears should have some opportunities to score, they’ll need to take advantage of them. Seven, not three.