Chicago Bears Sackwatch 2020: Week 9 vs Tennessee Titans

With the Chicago Bears playing their third-string left guard, their fourth-string center, and their third-string right tackle, I’m surprised they only allowed three sacks against the Tennessee Titans. Well, there was a fourth sack, but a Titan penalty negated it.

Yay!

Quarterback Nick Foles was pressured all afternoon and he was forced to throw off his back foot several times. He never looked comfortable, and even though the Bears designed plenty of quick throws and moving pockets for him, it wasn’t enough to thwart the Titan pass rush.

Sack 21 - Second Quarter 3:58 - Jayon Brown
I like the design of this play, but with the talent on the Bears offense, I’m not surprised it failed. The Bears run a play action with the o-line all blocking to the left, but right tackle Rashaad Coward allows too much penetration. All he has to do he get into his man and drive him down the line, but that didn’t happen.

Rookie tight end Cole Kmet, who is lined up next to Coward, starts off blocking left, but then when the linebacker (#55 Jayon Brown) doesn’t come at him immediately, he turns his attention away towards the edge rusher. This opens the door for the Brown to attack the quarterback and clean up the sack. Kmet should have stayed home knowing that Jimmy Graham was coming back across the formation for the edge rusher.

Kmet deserves blame on this sack allowed, but I can’t give Coward a pass for giving up the B-gap so easily. This one is split with half the blame on each.

Sack 22 - Third Quarter 7:18 - Harold Landry III
Leaving Jimmy Graham one on one to block anyone seems like a dumb decision. Letting him chip or help is fine, but on this play it seems like the Bears were sliding protection to the right, which meant Graham was one on one with Landry.

It looks like left tackle Charles Leno Jr. was in position to get Landry if he stayed home, but with the way the line slid protection right, his initial responsibility was the B-gap between he and left guard Arlington Hambright. Leno had no way of knowing that the Titan defensive tackle was going to kick all the way down to test the A-gap until it was too late to help back out on Landry.

Graham was even leaning inside on his three-point stance, but he was late in cutting Landry off. Running back David Montgomery was coming across the formation to get the defensive back off the edge, so once Graham lost leverage this play was doomed. This one is on Graham, but before we move on to the last sack, take a peek at the right tackle Coward.

Come on man...

Sack 23 - Fourth Quarter 13:55 - DaQuan Jones and Rashaan Evans
This was the blown up shovel pass, and what really sucks is had Allen Robinson not been knocked off his track he had a nice hole to run through.

A shovel pass is essentially a one route pass play, so with A-Rob not an option, there’s nothing for Foles to do but run. Coward gets too high off the snap, but center Alex Bars deserves some of the blame on this one as well. With right guard Germain Ifedi pulling to the left, it’s Bars’ responsibility to cut off the A-gap penetration to his right.

On the FOX replay you can see Coward get hit by two Titans and pushed back into Robinson which killed this play. Bars and Coward each get a half sack allowed on this one.

Now let’s take a look at how all 23 sacks allowed have been divvied up so far this season.

2020 Individual Sackwatch after 9 games:

Bobby Massie - 3⅓
Rashaad Coward - 3
Sacks Happen - 3
Nick Foles - 2
Mitchell Trubisky - 2
Jason Spriggs - 2
Alex Bars - 1.5
Jimmy Graham - 1.5
Germain Ifedi - 1⅓
Cody Whitehair - 1
Charles Leno Jr. - 1
Cole Kmet - .5
James Daniels - .5
Sam Mustipher - ⅓

And the historical Sackwatch after 9 games:

2010 - 34 Martz
2011 - 23 Martz
2012 - 28 Tice
2013 - 14 Trestman
2014 - 24 Trestman
2015 - 16 Gase
2016 - 18 Loggains
2017 - 24 Loggains
2018 - 18 Nagy
2019 - 27 Nagy
2020 - 23 Nagy