The Bears went from division champs in 2018 to 8-8 and out of the playoffs last season and a look at their point total tells much of the story of that fall.
Chicago scored 421 points and allowed 283 during the 2018 season. They allowed 15 more points last season, but scored 141 fewer points as they finished 29th in the league in that category.
Running back Tarik Cohen saw a similar drop in productivity. He averaged 3.3 yards per carry, which was down from 4.5 in 2018, and he caught 79 passes for 456 yards. That was eight more catches than he managed the previous year, but 269 fewer yards. Those differences make it unsurprising to hear Cohen say he expects the Bears to dial the offense back to 2018.
“I feel like we’ll probably go back to the things we were doing in 2018,” Cohen said, via the Chicago Sun-Times. “I feel like we’re just going to simplify things. I feel like at times we just made things too hard on ourselves and we didn’t have people guessing. I feel like we were kind of just showing our cards a little bit.”
Cohen said it is “going to be hard to tell who’s getting the ball and when or how they’re getting the ball” in this year’s offense, which should be a step in the right direction for the Bears if it results in a change of trends on the scoreboard.