Chicago Bears Must Establish Run Game to Take Down Dallas Cowboys

Offensive balance was the message coming Monday from Halas Hall. Coming off a Thanksgiving Day loss that saw the Bears run the ball only eight times for 13 yards, seemingly everyone was on the same page—from offensive coordinator Aaron Kromer to quarterback Jay Cutler to running back Matt Forte to head coach Marc Trestman.

“We’re just trying to get some balance in our offense,” Trestman said, via ChicagoBears.com. “We’ve got to take the mistakes we made last week and turn them into a positive this week...”

This week the Bears face the Dallas Cowboys on Thursday Night Football, a team that has gotten to eight wins by running DeMarco Murray into the ground (his 288 carries lead the league, 46 more than No. 2 on the list). The Cowboys offense is what Trestman needs to look at when game-planning every week.

The Cowboys offense has thrown the ball 364 times and run the ball 365 times.

How does the Bears offense compare? The Trestman-coached unit is operating at a run-pass split of 36.2 percent (277 runs) to 63.8 percent (457 dropbacks) this season.

The takeaway from that stat is this: Chicago’s offense has thrown the ball nearly 100 more times than Dallas and run the ball nearly 100 fewer times.

The type of balance the Bears need to find against the Cowboys is quite a bit different than what fits Trestman’s idea of balance. The Bears’ head coach believes a short, high-percentage pass (screens) is just as good as a run play. In a lot of cases, that’s true. But not when it becomes predictable, and that's where we're at with these Bears.

According to the Pro Football Focus table below (subscription required), it shows passes thrown behind the line of scrimmage to nine yards downfield, along with all of the team’s rushing attempts and yards.

Type of play	Completions-Attempts-Yards	Per-play average
Pass: thrown behind LOS to +9 yards	235-286-1,824 (82 percent)	6.4
All run plays	277-1,118	4.0
TOTALS	563 plays for 2,912 yards	5.2

The issue here is this: The Bears call plays of this variety (passes thrown nine yards or less + runs) 80.7 percent of the time. For this example, let’s say the Bears start every drive at their own 20-yard line. To go 80 yards at a 5.22 yard-per-play tilt will take 15.3 plays to reach the end zone.

Sustaining 15-play drives with the most turnover-prone quarterback in the league under center is not a winning formula. The 5.22 yards per play ranks 22nd in the NFL, according to TeamRankings.com, which isn’t far off from the Bears 21st-ranked scoring offense. It makes sense.

Cutler refers to this style of offense as “dink and dunk.” It’s just not sustainable over the course of a 16-game season. Maybe one game here or there. But not when the opposing team knows it's coming week in and week out. Last season, the Bears offense was 41.1 percent run to 58.9 percent pass and finished second in scoring offense (27.8). 

“You want to have some balance even if numbers wise it’s not as balanced as you want it to be,” Cutler said. “If you’re running the ball efficiently and giving the illusion that you’re going to run the ball it definitely helps.”

Last season, when the Bears dominated the Cowboys in Week 14, the last time the Cowboys lost on the road, Chicago's offense was extremely balanced. Not the fake balance Trestman talks about, but real balance, as in a near 50-50 split (32 runs to 36 passes). Josh McCown was under center for the Bears, completing 27-of-36 passes for 348 yards and four touchdowns. Matt Forte led a rushing attack that gained 149 yards on 32 carries.

When Trestman met the media Monday, running the ball against Dallas seemed to be high on his list of priorities, via ChicagoBears.com:

"

One of the things we know we have to do is we have to attempt to run the ball more. As I told the team, we don’t have to run the ball for seven yards a carry. Running the football has a residual effect on a lot of different things. It helps your movement game; it helps your play-action game. It does all those things. It gives your guys a chance to come off [the ball]. We all know these things and so we’ll try to do more of that.

"

Doing more of “that” is going to get the ball in the hands of the Bears’ most dynamic offensive player—Forte. The Bears’ running back leads the team in receptions (78), yards after the catch (573) and he’s tied with Brandon Marshall for most touchdowns (eight).

Forte also talked about the importance of establishing the run (obviously):

"

It’s (establishing the run) of the utmost importance, especially if we’re playing outside, with the weather and stuff. You can’t just sit back there and throw 50 passes a game and expect to win. Their front four were pinning their ears back. They didn’t have anything to do but pass rush. They’re not respecting the run, and then if you play fake, they’re not going take the play fake because you haven’t been running the ball. It’s a big part of the play-action game, to keep the defense off of keying on exactly what to do, whether it’s pass rush or trying to stop the run.

"

Opposing teams of the Bears haven’t had to respect anything, and that’s Trestman’s fault. He’s allowed the Bears offense to become one-dimensional. When Trestman and general manager Phil Emery met the media at the midseason mark, one of the main things the duo preached was balance on offense, yet that still has not happened, and it’s nearly been six weeks.

“The opportunity that we have against Dallas is to proceed forward and do a better job of putting balance in our attack, which opens up a lot of different things for us and has a residual effect on the defensive line as you move forward in the game,” the head coach said.

With the chance Trestman could be coaching for his job over these final four games, he must pull out all of the stops to win football games. Handing off to Forte only five times is not going to get the job done. With all the talk of a lack of balance, Trestman’s play-calling is under the microscope more now than it ever has been before.

“I believe that we’re going to be best when we keep a good balance, and we need to do that, and we need to do a better job of it,” Kromer said, via ChicagoBears.com.

All stats provided by Pro Football Focus unless otherwise noted. Quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.