Chicago Bears: Studs and duds vs. Vikings in Week 4
Stud: Nick Williams
When the Chicago Bears announced that Hicks wasn’t going to play this game it was a big blow. He was a huge force in holding Cook and the Vikings offense down last season. In two games against Minnesota in 2018, he recorded nine tackles, six of them for loss. He also had 2.5 sacks and four quarterback hits.
Replacing Hicks would be very difficult, or so we thought. Nick Williams is another player who stepped up big time. He had seven tackles, two of them for loss, two sacks, and a fumble recovery. He was all over the Vikings’ backfield as much as Hicks was last season. Roy Robertson-Harris held up strong on the other side, recording 1.5 sacks himself.
With those two, the Bears had the edges closed off. Robertson-Harris is comfortable doing it, but this was his first start. He had himself a game. Before this season, he had no sacks. Now he has sacks in three consecutive games and four total. The Bears made a great decision in keeping Williams over Jonathan Bullard.
Dud: Offensive Line
Okay, so I have the offensive line after I already had Leno on the dud list. Leno had his own special place on the list. The rest of the line had trouble getting a push for the running game. They did pretty well in pass protection, only giving up a sack and keeping Daniel clean for the most part.
The running attack, however, could only garner 72 rushing yards. David Montgomery had 53 of those yards. They were hard-earned yards. It seemed that each time a runner got the ball he ran into a wall. The running attack had only 16 yards in the fourth quarter. They tried the running game to seal the game but it’s difficult to do that when you get three-and-outs constantly. One of their drives in that quarter lasted just 25 seconds.
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To be fair, the line did a good job in the first half when the Bears just ate up huge chunks of time off the clock. That didn’t happen in the second half, however. They need to start getting back to their 2018 ways for the offense to start humming.