LAKE FOREST, Ill — Facing 3rd-and-9 at their own 9-yard-line, Marc Trestman called a somewhat head-scratching play on the Bears’ opening drive of their Week 5 loss to the Panthers. It was quick-hitting, inside-trap to Matt Forte that resulted in a seven-yard gain. Not a bad pickup, but not enough on 3rd-and-9 on your first offensive series of the game.

This was that play:

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Now, fast forward to Sunday in Atlanta. Holding on to a 19-13 lead with 10:12 left in the game, the Bears were staring at a 3rd-and-goal from the Falcons’ 9-yard-line. Seems like an obvious passing down, right?

Not to Marc Trestman. Knowing that a field goal made it a two-possession game, he didn’t have a problem running the ball, and he had a play he knew would at least pick up a few yards, if not go all the way to the end zone.

This time, with the ball at the other 9-yard-line, the quick-hitting, inside-trap to Forte made a ton of sense.

“You’re trying to do what’s best for your team at the time,” Trestman said Monday at Halas Hall. “You can run the ball — the chances of scoring aren’t high, but it’s possible, we’ve seen it done. You get a quick-hitter like that, you’re able to get into the secondary but it was going to be difficult to throw the ball into the end zone. That’s why our offensive line was blocking linebackers on the goal line, because they were playing pass all the way.”

Trestman also said Jay Cutler had the option to switch to a pass if the Falcons’ showed a certain front, but the linebackers started retreating before the snap, and it was pretty obvious they were playing pass.

The play call is not a draw, but rather a trap, with left guard Matt Slauson setting the three-technique (circled in red) up for a trap block delivered by pulling right guard Kyle Long (circled in yellow).

If you compare the play from Sunday to last week’s against the Panthers, the Bears dressed it up differently with where the receivers lined up, but the meat of the play was the same — the only big difference being Martellus Bennett blocking down and letting the right end go free.

The Falcons walked right into the trap and this was an easy touchdown.

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Give Trestman credit for taking a play that didn’t quite work the week prior and tweaking it just enough so it resulted in a touchdown in a key moment Sunday against the Falcons.

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.

QB Jay Cutler (Grade: 12.0) – By far his best game of the season, Cutler was smart, safe and accurate. The 47-yard completion to Brandon Marshall in the second quarter was a beautiful throw, while the 74-yard bomb to Alshon Jeffery was probably the biggest play of the season so far. Don’t discount the decision to tuck and run for five yards on 3rd-and-10 late in the fourth quarter. Those are the moments in which he’s forced bad passes this season. There was nothing wrong with punting in that situation.

DE Jared Allen (8.0) – Let’s just call it a learning experience for Falcons rookie left tackle Jake Matthews. Not only did Allen pick up his first sack of the season, but he was also responsible for seven of the Bears’ 20 quarterback disruptions, according to Pro Football Focus.

DT Stephen Paea (6.0) – Paea is quietly having a solid season in the last year of his rookie contract. The Bears were disappointed in his play against the Bills and Packers, but the defensive tackle has been very good in the four other games. Paea is second among NFL defensive tackles with four sacks, trailing only Buffalo’s Marcell Dareus (5.0).

WR Brandon Marshall (6.0) – Just an all-around good game for the Bears’ wide receiver as he blocked well and caught six passes for 113 yards on nine targets.

LB Christian Jones (5.0) – Darryl Sharpton got a lot of the credit after the game (and rightly so), but Jones probably had the best game among the linebackers. His edge rushes didn’t always get home, but they drew attention and he played very well against the run. Jones is one of the bigger linebackers you’ll find and he has a good amount of upside going forward if the Bears can continue to develop him.

Five Lowest Grades

RT Jordan Mills (6.0) – Marc Trestman said it best when he admitted that Mills “didn’t have one of his best games.” The head coach pointed to the noise in the stadium as a reason, and that may be true, but the noise inside the Georgia Dome actually wasn’t all that impressive. In fact, the stadium was half empty when Mills committed a false start on the first play from scrimmage. Mills allowed a sack, another QB hit and was also guilty of three penalties, although the illegal formation may not have been entirely his fault.

TE Dante Rosario (-2.0) – Rosario has had a pretty good season, but he missed a couple blocks on Alshon Jeffery end-arounds that went nowhere.

WR Santonio Holmes (-2.0) – Holmes wasn’t very decisive on his on his two punt returns and was actually credited with -1 yards combined. He also seems to have fallen far behind Josh Morgan as the No. 3 wide receiver as Holmes only received nine offensive snaps to Morgan’s 37.

OL Eben Britton (-2.0) – Britton was guilty of a hold and allowed a pressure as well.

RG Kyle Long (-1.0) – Long had a better game Sunday than he did last week, but he still allowed a couple pressures and missed a key run block.

Other Observations

– It’s not easy to explain how the Bears got the production they did from their patchwork group of linebackers Sunday, but there are two major factors that have to be considered. First, the play of the upgraded defensive line helped a lot. Take those three linebackers — Sharpton, Greene and Jones — and put them behind last year’s decimated defensive line, and the Falcons score more than 13 points.

But also take into account the upgraded defensive coaching staff. Do you think the Bears would have found a guy like Darryl Sharpton to bring in off the street and prepare to make the defensive calls 17 days later if Tim Tibesar was still the linebackers coach? That’s not so much a knock on Tibesar as it is a credit to new linebackers coach Reggie Herring. Tibesar had never coached in the NFL before, so he didn’t have a guy like Sharpton — who Herring coached for three years in Houston —  he could recommend to general manager Phil Emery when the Bears were in need of linebacker depth.

The Bears actually thought D.J. Williams (neck) was going to play until Saturday morning when he came down with a setback, but they had prepared Sharpton all week to make the calls just in case. That preparation, along with an early morning meeting with Herring Sunday allowed Sharpton, Greene and Jones to go to the Georgia Dome and fly around like they did.

– Once again, there was questionable clock management at the end of the first half by the Bears. The offense got the ball at their own 7-yard-line with 4:06 left in the second quarter, but still nearly ran out of time despite having all three timeouts and the two-minute warning to work with. And when the 12-play, 83-yard drive was over, the Bears had to settle for a field goal with six seconds left in the half.

Amazingly, the first six plays of the drive took 3:32 off the clock and the Bears didn’t call their first timeout until Cutler advanced the ball to the Falcons’ 27-yard-line on a pass to Bennett with 28 seconds remaining. After burning all three timeouts on three consecutive plays, the Bears had two shots to the end zone from the 10-yard-line with 14 seconds left. That put them in a situation where they could only throw the ball to the end zone or throw it away (making things a lot easier for the Falcons’ defense) and Cutler did good just to get an incompletion on third down by throwing the ball lefty into a referee.

The sequence was eerily similar to the drive at the end of the first half against the Packers, in which Bennett was stopped just inches short of the end zone and the Bears got zero points.

Asked Monday about his timeout strategy in those situations, Trestman said: “We did it based on the criteria that we set up. I don’t think there’s a time where the utilization of those timeouts don’t come within the best mathematics we can use. So we feel pretty comfortable with that.”

That answer certainly contrasts to the long, detailed timeout explanation Trestman gave a year ago after the Bears’ overtime victory against the Baltimore Ravens.

– Is there a better candidate for NFL defensive rookie of the year than cornerback Kyle Fuller? He has performed very well in back-to-back matchups against Kelvin Benjamin and Julio Jones. Sunday, Fuller forced a fumble and made a crucial pass defense on Jones late in the third quarter that forced a Falcons’ three-and-out in between the Bears’ two touchdown drives. It was a big stop in the game.

Sure, Fuller has only played six games, but it sure seems like they are just the first six in what could be a long career in a Bears’ uniform.

Adam Hoge covers the Bears for 87.7 The Game and TheGameChicago.com. Follow him on Twitter at @AdamHoge.