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Ron Turner: Perception vs. Reality

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For quite some time now (read: years), offensive coordinator Ron Turner has been criticized to no end.  Even if you only use this year as an example, you can scan WCG and find plenty (read: tons) of people throwing out criticisms, specifically focusing on several aspects of his play calling.

Dan Pompei of the Chicago Tribune took a lot of these criticisms, and broke them down from a statistical perspective.  Here's an excerpt, but make sure you check out the entire article.  It's a good read.

The gripe: Defenses know when the Bears are passing and when they are running.

The truth: The Bears' tendency has been to go against the usual calls on first and third downs. On first-and-10, usually when most of the league hands off, the Bears have passed 59.8 percent of the time. On third-and-10, traditionally a time to throw, the Bears have run it 50 percent of the time.