LAKE FOREST, Ill.(AP) — The message Chicago Bears coach Ben Johnson hopes has been delivered is how confident his team has grown in its ability to win using whatever means are required.
The Bears have won about any way possible in taking nine of their last 10 games, including Friday’s 24-15 triumph over the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles.
“There’s no secret, man, there are no shortcuts,” coach Ben Johnson said. “We’ve got to go out next week and put in the same amount of work that we’ve been doing and we’ve got to continue to get better.
“We’re still not at what we’re capable of being yet as an entire team, and so we’re going to continue to strive to put that full 60 minutes of three phases of complete football together.”
They’ll need to improve facing a schedule that includes the next two of three against their rivals, the Green Bay Packers.
The passing probably needs to be more consistent to keep their current five-game winning streak going, but it’s not as if the Bears have been winning only on the ground all year like they did Friday.
Against the Eagles, the Bears won with Kyle Monangai rushing for 130 yards and D’Andre Swift running for 125.
They beat Dallas with four touchdown passes from Caleb Williams and three TD passes against Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.
The defense keeps taking the ball away at a league-leading rate, after Kevin Byard’s league-high sixth interception Friday and Nahshon Wright’s forced fumble and recovery of Jalen Hurts’ tush-push attempt. They’ve done this despite injuries taking seven starters out at times.
They’ve won on special teams on the game’s final play, with a blocked field goal against the Raiders and a field goal in wet conditions against the Commanders.
All the while they keep winning on a week-by-week basis and proving wrong those skeptical about a schedule perceived as easy.
“We’ll keep focusing on being 1-0, we’ll keep focusing on finding ways to win games, but also find ways to better ourselves so we can be where we want to be,” Williams said.
What’s working
The running game. They had two 100-yard rushers in a game for the first time since Matt Suhey and Walter Payton in 1985.
“To do something like that, that's amazing," Swift said. “Hats off to the O-line. I can't say that enough. The job that we're doing up front, and with the receivers blocking downfield, it makes our jobs so much easier.”
The Bears now lead the NFL in rushing at 153.8 yards a game heading into weekend games. Their 281 yards Sunday was still two yards short of their season high of 283 in beating Cincinnati.
What needs help
The passing game. They averaged a season low 4.3 yards per attempt and Williams completed a season-low 47.2% (17 of 36), the fifth straight game he’s been below 60%. It isn’t only Williams. In some games they’ve had dropped passes, but Friday they had instances of receivers losing their feet twice on well-targeted throws.
Stock up
Monangai had his second 100-yard game with 22 runs for 130 yards and it was his first with more than 48 since he had 176 against the Bengals on Nov. 2.
Stock down
Williams. While he has completed only 53.2% of his passes the last five games, the one thing he had been doing right was avoiding interceptions.
On Friday, he threw an interception to Philadelphia’s Jalyx Hunt on a simple screen pass to end his streak at 179 straight.
Injuries
Defensive tackle Andrew Billings is in the NFL concussion protocol.
Key number
47. The Bears ran the ball 47 times, 30 times more than the Eagles. That, and 10 of 17 on third-down conversions, helped them establish 39:18 in possession time to the Eagles’ 20:42.
Next step
At Green Bay on Dec. 7 with the NFC North lead on the line.
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