How Bears can improve offense by stacking concepts

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There’s a lot wrong with the Bears offense. The offensive line is beat up and can’t buy Nick Foles any time to throw the ball, or create holes for David Montgomery to run. There have been bad drops and worse turnovers. But one of the biggest problems that Pro Football Talk’s Chris Simms sees is a lack of cohesion. And it’s one thing the Bears can fix moving forward.

“I would just like to see some sort of formula,” Simms told NBC Sports Chicago. “Let’s take the Rams for instance, with Sean McVay. This offensive genius and all this, right? His formula is very simple. You saw it a few weeks ago on Sunday Night Football. It’s speed sweep. Then, it’s fake the speed sweep and give it to the running back. Then it’s fake the speed sweep, fake it to the running back, bootleg. Then it’s fake the speed sweep, fake it to the running back, play-action pass down the field. Then, fake the speed sweep, fake it to the running back, screen to the running back.

“He uses the same five plays and beats everybody with it every week. It doesn’t have to be like we’ve got to reinvent the wheel and go to Air Coryell and throw the ball all over the place. You’ve just got to find one or two things you do really well and stick with it. Then you start to build the tree off of it.”

Simms says it’s a lesson he learned at a very young age, from one of the best to ever do it: his dad, Phil.

“That’s what great offenses do,” Chris said. “He played for Bill Parcells and the Giants. They wanted to run the ball, control the scrimmage and then take some big shots down the field every now and then. But he would always go, ‘When we had one play, I guarantee you a few days later we would have a play off of that, then a play off of that. There you go. All of a sudden you’ve taken one concept and you’ve got 15 plays in your offense that all play off of that. It looks the same, but is a little different, and it really stresses the defense out. There’s just none of that in Chicago now.”

That offensive mindset helped Phil and the Giants win two Super Bowls. It also helped Phil set a Super Bowl record by completing 88% of his passes in Super Bowl XXI.

But for the Bears, Chris said the play calling for the feels random.

“It’s a rolodex. It’s just, ‘Let me spin the rolodex, I like that one. Ok next down, that one.’ I just want to go, ‘Ok, I like that play, but what’s it have to do with this game? This defense that we’re attacking?’ I just don’t understand it.”

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