Chicago Bears Sackwatch 2018: Week 6 vs Miami Dolphins

With as hot as it was in Miami, I was expecting a few more breakdowns in the pass protection for the Chicago Bears. All things considered, I’d say that only allowing two sacks and three total quarterbacks hits was a good afternoon for their pass protection. It wasn’t a completely clean day for them however, as Pro Football Focus had the Dolphins down for pressuring Mitchell Trubisky on 10 of his 36 drop-backs.

The Bears’ QB hits allowed on the season are quite good however. According to NFL.com, the Bears have only allowed 19 QB hits this year. Only the Saints and Panthers have allowed fewer. His sack percentage, while still in the bottom half of the league at 6.9%, is an improvement over last year’s 8.6%.

But back to the heat before I get into the Sackwatch this week. Former Bear, James “Big Cat” Williams, made an interesting point on the WSCR post game show on Sunday when he remarked that offensive linemen (and quarterbacks) are the only players on the field that never raise their hand to get a breather. He said o-linemen are just trained and conditioned to never take a play off. Even though this is obvious, I still get a kick out of hearing it said by Big Cat.

This tells me that offensive linemen are some the toughest and best conditioned athletes on the planet.

Sackwatch after 5 games

2010 - 21 Martz
2011 - 18 Martz
2012 - 14 Tice
2013 - 9 Trestman
2014 - 12 Trestman
2015 - 11 Gase
2016 - 11 Loggains
2017 - 9 Loggains
2018 - 12 Nagy

Sack 11 - Second Quarter 14:44 - Jonathan Woodard
When I watched this play live, my immediate reaction was that the sack allowed was on right tackle Bobby Massie. He was in good position to cut off defensive end Jonathan Woodard, but then he stopped moving his feet when the Dolphin defender started to slip past him. Massie tried to give Woodard one final push past his quarterback, but he didn’t get enough on it.

The thing that gives me pause on giving it to Massie is Trubisky walking right into the sack. It looks like he has an escape lane if he steps up and to the right, but on the second replay in the video above, it looks like he never saw Massie get beat. After spinning around to fake it to Taylor Gabriel on the rocket sweep motion (which I loved by the way), Trubisky is looking left. He senses a little pressure from that side then darts to his right. Right into Woodard who cleanly beat Massie.

The quickness in which Massie was beat leads me to giving this one to him.

Sack 12 - Second Quarter 9:30 - Vincent Taylor
This makes two sacks allowed by Kyle Long this year, and he was beat on both in the same manner.

All four of the Dolphin defensive linemen are lined up very wide, and the two lined up against Chicago’s right side stayed that way on their rush. Long doesn’t take a good angle on his kick-step, and defensive tackle Vincent Taylor beats him with speed. A quick rip move to get under Long sets him up to just work right past him and on to the quarterback. I’d like to see Long, when faced with this alignment again, reflect back to his days as a right tackle and get better depth on his initial move.

Individual Sackwatch through 5 games:

Mitchell Trubisky - 4.5
Sacks Happen - 2
Kyle Long - 2
Bobby Massie - 2
Dion Sims - .5
Charles Leno Jr. - .5
Eric Kush - .5