You didn’t have to be a player or coach to spot the problem before the snap.
Sitting in the press box, you could see it right away: Kelvin Benjamin was uncovered in the slot. The Panthers had three wide receivers to the right and the Bears only had two cornerbacks to that side, despite being in nickel personnel with three corners on the field.
In other words, the Bears were in zone. If I could see from the press box, you know Cam Newton saw it on the field.
“That just lets you know how vanilla we are,” Bears cornerback Tim Jennings said Tuesday night on his weekly 87.7 The Game radio show when I told him I was able to identify the coverage from the press box before the snap.
LISTEN: Tim Jennings with Adam Hoge & Jason McKie
“Once you have all the receivers on one side and I’m left over there with the tight end, they automatically know we’re in zone right there,” Jennings said. “They identified the coverage and they know the holes of the defense and Benjamin just so happened to sit right there in the hole, catch it and try to get upfield.”
This is how it looked from up above:
Benjamin is circled in yellow. He’s uncovered at the line, despite the fact that the Bears had Kyle Fuller following him for almost the entire game, which was another dead giveaway that the Bears were in zone.
“Once he lined up on the inside and Kyle was on the outside, ding, ding, we’re in zone,” Jennings said.
At the bottom of screen, safety Ryan Mundy has walked up to the line of scrimmage, which tells you he’s either blitzing or pressing tight end Greg Olsen at the line. Jennings remains on that side because the tight end and running back both have to be accounted for.
Knowing that the Bears are in zone, Newton has a pretty good idea that linebacker Jon Bostic (circled in red) is probably not going to blitz, but will rather drop back in coverage underneath Benjamin. Either way, with safety Chris Conte playing 17-yards off the line of scrimmage, there’s a pretty good chance there will be a hole for Benjamin to sit in.
Sure enough, easy 20-yard gain:
Making matters worse, the tight end and running back stayed in to block on this play, so linebacker Lance Briggs is easily accounted for as a rusher and Jennings and Mundy (circled in red) are left guarding no one. Benjamin has a big hole to exploit between Bostic and Conte and Newton fits the ball in perfectly.
So if this coverage was so easy for Newton to identify, isn’t that a problem?
“It’s nothing we worry about,” Jennings said. “The offense gets paid too. They do film study. They make plays. They adjust. They know how to sit in certain routes. They adjust to the routes whether it’s man or zone and that’s what happened.”
It’s true that on every single pass play, the defense is trying to disguise their coverage and the quarterback is trying to identify it. Sometimes the offense identifies it and wins, and sometimes the defense successfully disguises it and wins. The problem on this particular play, however, is that there doesn’t seem to be much disguising going on. It was blatantly obvious before the snap that the Bears were in zone coverage and the Panthers had a mismatch to exploit it.
Now, if you remember this play, then you know how it ends. Conte puts a big hit on Benjamin and suffers a concussion, but Isaiah Frey (who has since been waived) comes in, strips Benjamin and recovers the fumble.
“The thing about it is as long as we don’t give up big plays and make them grind it out, we’re going to get opportunities to take the ball away and when he caught it, we made him pay for it and we got the fumble at the end of the day,” Jennings said.
Sure, it turned out to be a good outcome for the Bears’ defense, but that doesn’t mean the coverage that came in from defensive coordinator Mel Tucker shouldn’t be questioned. And it wasn’t the only odd coverage in this game that ended with a bad result.
Let’s take a closer look at Newton’s go-ahead fourth quarter touchdown to Olsen that completed the Panthers’ comeback.
This time, the Bears are in their base defense with Briggs and Christian Jones showing outside blitzes:
At this point, Newton doesn’t know if they are blitzing, but he does know based on the alignment that if Jones does blitz, Olsen (lined up tight to the left) will get a free release off the line of scrimmage.
And that’s all he needed:
With the double outside blitzes, the Bears play man-coverage with safety Danny McCray assigned to Olsen. Many were wondering after the game why Olsen got a free release off the line of scrimmage and it’s because of the blitz off the edge. That’s the way the play is designed. McCray can’t come up to the line of scrimmage too because it gives the blitz away.
Now, McCray would probably tell you that if he could do it over he would probably try to jump the route or try to meet Olsen within five yards of the line of scrimmage so he could legally get his hands on him, but remember, McCray doesn’t know what route Olsen is running before the ball is snapped.
The bigger issue here is the inherent contradictory nature of the defensive call. The blitzes force Newton to get rid of the ball faster, but the Panthers are only six yards away from the end zone and the coverage does nothing to prevent Olsen from being open right away on a short route.
Asked after the game if it’s hard to stop a guy like Olsen without a jam at the line, McCray said: “It’s hard, but it something we can do. It’s something that we go over in practice. It’s something we can execute.”
Sure, maybe McCray could have executed the coverage a little better, but it sure seems like the coaching staff is asking a lot of their players to stop an athletic tight end from the 6-yard-line with a free release.
Meanwhile, does this look familiar? It’s from Week 1 when the Panthers beat Lovie Smith’s Buccaneers:
https://vine.co/v/OK0YqYr7A1x/embed/simple
Five Highest Grades
Note: Throughout the season I keep my own grades on players to track their progress. Take them with a grain of salt, as I don’t know every assignment on every play. That said, at the end of the year, these grades are a pretty good indicator of how the season went. Of the 13 players who graded out negatively last season, nine of them are no longer on the team and the other four are Jon Bostic, Chris Conte, Shea McClellin and Jordan Mills, all of whom have valid reasons for being brought back. For reference, 0.00 is the baseline and Alshon Jeffery and Brandon Marshall tied for the highest cumulative grade on the team last year with a 3.97.
WR Alshon Jeffery (Grade: 5.0) – Another ridiculous one-handed grab and another all-around productive day for the third-year wide receiver.
DE Willie Young (5.0) – Has been the best player on the Bears defense through five games and it hasn’t been close. Makes you wonder why he still received nine less snaps than Lamarr Houston Sunday and 22 less than Jared Allen.
DT Ego Ferguson (5.0) – As good as first-rounder Kyle Fuller has looked, the Bears’ second-round pick hasn’t been far behind. One of his two batted passes Sunday ended up in the arms of Lance Briggs for an interception.
RB Matt Forte (3.0) – Forte ends up among the five highest grades despite the disastrous fumble at the end of the game which led to the Panthers’ go-ahead touchdown. That shows you how good of a game he was having before the costly mistake.
LB Jon Bostic (3.0) – Bostic was having a pretty good game — particularly against the run — before leaving with a back injury. He has quietly graded out positively in all five games this season.
Five Lowest Grades
ST Teddy Williams (-4.0) – Not only did Williams commit the personal foul by hitting Philly Brown before he caught the punt, but he was also among a handful of Bears players who did not go after the loose ball, which allowed Brown to pick it up and return it for a touchdown.
QB Jay Cutler (-3.0) – Cutler finished with a passer rating of 95.5, but really wasn’t asked to make many difficult throws throughout the game and both interceptions were clearly on him. The heavy amount of successful screen passes inflated his numbers and it was just not a good performance overall.
S Danny McCray (-3.0) – McCray has been pretty solid filling in for Conte and Mundy this season, but he could have been better Sunday against the Panthers. The second Greg Olsen touchdown was detailed above, but the first one was a bigger problem for McCray as he appeared to peak inside when he had the coverage over the top.
RG Kyle Long (-2.0) – Long was pretty hard on himself after the game and while he made a number of nice blocks throughout the game, the film review definitely showed some big misses, including one screen to Matt Forte early the second quarter that would have gone for a long gain.
LT Michael Ola (-2.0) – Ola should be commended for playing four different positions on the Bears’ offensive line since the preseason, but Sunday was not as clean of a game for him as the Bears would like you to believe.
Other Observations:
– Martellus Bennett’s failure to block on the long Forte screen pass in the second quarter was obviously a huge moment in the game, but let’s not forget that Forte also suffered an injury to his left hand on that play as well. Could that have played a role in his crucial fourth quarter fumble? The ball was in his right hand on the fumble and Forte admitted after the game that he should have had two hands on the ball.
– How bad is the return game this year? On 10 returns this year, Bears kick returners have only advanced the ball past the 18-yard-line twice and both of those instances occurred when the Jets inexplicably decided to kick the ball short. Tight end Dante Rosario caught both of those short kicks. The first one he received at the 15-yard-line and returned 10 yards to the 25, while the second one he caught at the 7-yard-line and lateraled back to Rashad Ross who advanced the ball out to the 27. So on eight true kick returns this season, the Bears have not advanced the ball past the 18-yard-line. Not good.
– I have little doubt my grades differ somewhat from the Bears’ official grades, but keep this in mind: the five lowest cumulative grades I have right now are for Isaiah Frey, Shaun Draughn, Michael Spurlock, Rashad Ross and Teddy Williams. Frey, Draughn, Spurlock and Ross have all been waived, while Williams’ game Sunday speaks for itself.
Adam Hoge covers the Bears for 87.7 The Game and TheGameChicago.com. Follow him on Twitter at @AdamHoge.