Chicago Bears: Offense must get more vertical

For the Chicago Bears offense to truly take off, Mitchell Trubisky must take more shots down the field and stretch the defense vertically.

The Chicago Bears Week 1 loss to the Green Bay Packers still stings. The Bears had the Packers on the ropes yet failed to finish. The offense, which looked so good in the first quarter, come to a screeching halt after that.

One of the reasons the Bears offense struggled as the game went along was because they failed to stretch the field vertically. The Bears definitely stretched the Packers defense horizontally with all of the screen calls, but Mitchell Trubisky only attempted five passes that traveled over 20 yards downfield.

This is not the type of offense the Bears need to run. Taylor Gabriel is one of the fastest players in the league, but he averaged only five yards per reception (five catches, 25 yards). One of Gabriel’s catches came on an actual deep shot and was good for 31 yards.

However, the Bears heavily used Gabriel in the screen game and he “racked-up” four additional catches for -6 yards! The team failed to utilize Gabriel’s biggest strength and it cost them at the end.

Of the five passes Trubisky threw over 20 yards down the field, he only completed two of them. One was the Gabriel 31-yard catch, while the other came on a terrific catch from Allen Robinson along the right sideline.

Throwing deep has so many positives for an offense. It forces defensive backs to cover for an extended period of time, oftentimes leading to pass interference penalties. It also forces the safeties to line-up farther back, allowing more room to run for running backs.

The Bears have Gabriel, Tarik Cohen and Anthony Miller, all of whom can absolutely fly. Against the Seattle Seahawks on Monday Night Football, the Bears must do a better job of utilizing that speed and gaining yards in chunks. Averaging less than five yards per pass attempt, as Trubisky did Week 1, is not going to win many games.