Bears Blitz

The Bears’ offense is coming together piece by piece.

It’s just that the pieces aren’t fitting together in the order many thought they would.

“I know it is going to take some time and I knew it wasn’t going to be the first week, and it’s hard to make everything gel the way you want it to in the first few weeks,” offensive coordinator Ron Turner said Wednesday at Halas Hall. “It’s going to take some time and as long as we get a little bit better each week, which I think we’re doing, it will fall into place and it will come.”

The Bears always have counted on their running game first and then their passes. So far this season the running game has struggled to a 2.8 yards-per-carry pace.

Meanwhile, quarterback Jay Cutler has taken the passing attack on a torrid pace after a nightmare first half at Green Bay.

Since he threw three first-half interceptions in the opener against Green Bay, Cutler is 57-of-79 for 633 yards with two interceptions and six touchdowns for a 110.4 passer rating. His completion percentage of .721 is the best in the NFL the last 10 quarters of ball.

“It’s really early in the season,” Cutler said. “Offensively, we’re doing some good things, we’re doing some bad things.

“We just need to keep going in the right direction. That’s what we’re trying to do.”
The Bears acquired Cutler thinking the quarterback makes the receivers, not the other way around.

“That is what great quarterbacks do, they elevate the play of those around them,” Turner said. “I think he is doing that because they all believe if they do their job, he can do that  he can make something happen, he can do something special.”

It’s for this reason the Bears didn’t sign a big name receiver and haven’t brought anyone in—contrary to false rumors that surfaced this week saying the team had interest in Marvin Harrison and that a car with the license plates “Indy88” had turned up at Halas Hall.

“They’re playing really well,” Cutler said about Devin Hester, Earl Bennett and Johnny Knox. “We never doubted them. There was no chance of us bringing anybody else in.
“We knew we were going to go with this crew. We felt good about it and they’re playing really well right now. I’m proud of them.”

Although the Knox has a 68-yard catch on a bomb, Hester a 36-yard TD catch against the Packers on a go route and Bennett a 31-yard catch the last game, most of the bigger gains have come after short passes.

“They’ve done a great job of that—Devin, Earl and Johnny,” Cutler said. “I try to get the ball in their hands as quickly as possible and let them do their thing.

“They’ve done a great job of breaking tackles and making people miss, but they know when to get down. So they’re not out their sacrificing their bodies.”

The offense hasn’t started fast in any of the games even though Cutler’s statistics have been good in the last 2 ½ games.

They’ve been outscored 17-0 in first quarters, 30-16 in the first half and and outscored opponents 41-24 in the second half.

“Well, we went to Green Bay, really didn’t have a good feel for what they were going to do defensively, didn’t have a lot on film on them,” Cutler said. “Pittsburgh’s Pittsburgh, a great defense. In Seattle, it’s the loudest stadium I’ve ever been in, so it’s hard for us to start fast. We had a couple shots early that we just missed. Would have got us on the board early. We just need to keep fighting.

“The good thing about it is we are making plays in the fourth quarter and we are finishing strong.”

The only thing which hasn’t clicked at all has been the running game. They think it’s coming, although Matt Forte’s slight knee injury casts some doubt on this at this point. He was involved in only part of Wednesday’s practice.

And Turner admitted he didn’t make things better last Sunday himself with a mistake. He called inside running plays when diminuitive running back Garrett Wolfe was on the field.

“They were called and the third one, short yardage, honestly he shouldn’t have been in there,” Turner said. “We get in a short yardage situation and that’s usually Matt and AP (Adrian Peterson) in there running that. That was an error on our part, my part, (it) should have had one of those guys in there.”

The longest runs produced by the running game have been 11 yards by Forte and 15 by Peterson, but coach Lovie Smith wouldn’t be surprised if the running game starts to pop

“It’s improving,” he said.  “We got some production from it (against Seattle), we still need to take another step with it, but we’re still committed to it by the number of rushes that we have.”

In this piece-by-piece approach to offense, the rushes are there, the next piece is the yardage.

If that happens, the faster starts could follow.