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Bears-Texans takeaways: Where was Montgomery before?

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The Bears' dominant 36-7 win over the Houston Texans revealed some good things - and bad things - about Matt Nagy, Mitch Trubisky and the 2020 season.

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The Bears needed to use David Montgomery more on Sunday, but that’s the only bad thing you can say about the running back’s afternoon. Montgomery carried 11 times for 113 yards, with an explosive 80-yard touchdown run on the first play of the game setting the tone for the entire game at Soldier Field.

That 80-yard touchdown, by the way, was the Bears’ first score of 50 or more yards since Oct. 28, 2018.

But the Mitch Trubisky factor is real with Montgomery:

Montgomery w/Trubisky at QB: 76 carries, 442 yards (5.8 YPC), 4 TDs

Montgomery w/Nick Foles at QB: 94 carries, 318 yards (3.4 YPC), 0 TD

Just these numbers alone make you wonder how different the Bears’ season might’ve been had Matt Nagy not benched Trubisky early in the third quarter of Week 3’s trip to Atlanta. Benching Trubisky for Foles meant Nagy got a chance to run *his* shotgun-heavy offense, which failed spectacularly.

Fitting a scheme to the players you have works. Fitting players to the scheme you want doesn’t. That’s an abundantly clear lesson when you look at Montgomery’s season, and again – maybe this season could’ve been different had Nagy not turned to Foles so quickly, or at all.

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If you want the Bears to draft a quarterback next April, you can probably stop dreaming about Trey Lance or Zach Wilson coming to Chicago.

The Bears did have a path to getting a top-10 pick prior to Sunday, but that path was contingent on losing to the Texans. It’s hard to imagine the Bears losing to the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 16, so we’re looking at a 7-9 season at worst here.

And that’ll get the Bears a first-round pick somewhere in the No. 12-No. 15 range, probably. That’s unlikely to be high enough to draft a quarterback of the future.

The Bears will have to re-stock their roster through the draft next year thanks to a meager amount of cap space, so trading up for a quarterback would be risky – whoever the GM is would have to be especially confident that player is absolutely going to be a long-term solution at quarterback, because the roster around him in 2021 would be worse because of the move to trade up to get him.

But if you’re hoping the Bears pick an offensive lineman in the first round next year, today’s result was probably a step toward finding a young tackle early in the 2021 NFL Draft. And that may actually wind up being better for this franchise in the long run. We’ll see.

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Down 33-7 after the Bears’ offense scored in the third quarter (!!), the Texans methodically moved the ball downfield on 17-play, 72-yard drive lasting over six minutes. It didn’t even end in points being scored, despite getting to the Bears’ one-yard line. It felt overly cautious…until Watson was injured after being hit by Roquan Smith near the Bears’ goal line.

Watson probably should’ve just been pulled after getting hurt – when he returned to the field, the Texans were chasing a 26-point deficit with 26 minutes left.

But the contrast between the Bears and Texans on Sunday should be kept in mind the rest of the season. The Texans played like they have nothing to play for; the Bears, for all their faults on their six-game losing streak, never did quit on 2020. 

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