Bears Blitz

Published by Dominic Perilli on November 29, 2010
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Chicago Bears

What a pain that game was to watch. Poor tackling. Poor coverage. Poor red zone offense. Poor everything.

I would be wrong to say that a majority of the blame wasn’t on the defense. For a defense that ranks so high in the NFL in takeaways, the Eagles had zero. There were a ton of missed tackles and a ton of over-anxious players in the Eagles’ defense. I’ve seen more missed arm tackles in this game than I’ve seen in a while. I’m not expecting ten turnovers but, come on, the Bears give up a ton of them.

In my game preview I said that Joselio Hanson wouldn’t be very effective starting at cornerback in place of Asante Samuel. Well, it looks like I was right. Hanson couldn’t keep up with any of his assignments, and often got swapped out for rookie Trevard Lindley. However, a majority of the swap-outs were because Hanson needed to play the nickel. The horrible field conditions didn’t help, as Hanson slipped while covering Earl Bennett. Bennett scored a touchdown on that play.

The two key plays that needed to be made were a Nate Allen interception in the end zone and a Michael Vick touchdown pass at the two-yard line. As we all know, Allen was only fingertips away from intercepting Jay Cutler‘s touchdown pass to Earl Bennett, and Vick’s pass was tipped to Bears safety Chris Harris in the endzone. But you know the old saying, “Coulda, woulda, shoulda.”

How about defensive coordinator Sean McDermott calling the zone defense for most of the game? News flash, you can’t play zone against a Mike Martz offense. Martz will exploit every single hole and he will take advantage of the weak players which, in this case, was Joselio Hanson.

As the game progressed, we saw a little bit of combo coverage and then at the end the Eagles started using man coverage a lot. A little too late.

DeSean Jackson and Brent Celek really surprised me in this game. DeSean seemed to drop some pretty routine passes that could have resulted in points, and Brent seemed as slow as I’ve ever seen him. DeSean dropped a lot of easy ones against the Giants but I thought it was just a fluke. I guess not. Maybe he is still worrying about getting his head taken off.

CSN Philly reported that DeSean Jackson “sat in his locker wrapped in a towel, occasionally looking up [but mostly had] his head down in his lap and his hands over his face.”

Obviously, D-Jack has had a very frustrating two games. Teams are making sure that he doesn’t get the chance to make a play. It comes with the territory of being explosive.

All in all, the Eagles’ sloppy play from last week carried over to this game against a well-prepared Chicago Bears team. The Bears are on the rise and they were out to prove something. Point taken.

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