Ask Bears coach Matt Nagy what it will take for quarterback Nick Foles to take the next step at the Rams on Monday night, and he starts at the beginning.
“For Nick — it’s probably me as a playcaller, him as a quarterback, us as an offense —being able to get off to a fast start,” he said. “And keep that fast start.”
It would be a first for Foles in a Bears uniform.
In the first quarter of his three starts this season, Foles is 15-for-23 for 117 yards, one touchdown, one interception and a 74.0 passer rating. The Bears have averaged 4.2 yards per play and have been outscored 20-7.
And about that one score: it came when the Bears inherited the ball at the Panthers’ 7 on Tashaun Gipson’s interception last week. Foles threw a nine-yard, third-down touchdown pass to Cole Kmet — but not before the Bears took a delay of game and burned a timeout.
Throw out that drive, and Foles’ farthest first-quarter drive made it to the Buccaneers’ 36 — upon which he promptly threw an interception.
“It seems like the offense, we always start slow and defense is always helping us out,” running back Cordarrelle Patterson said. “It’s time. It’s time for us to help those guys out and just get out and get going — just starting fast and finishing fast and not trying to wait until the third or fourth quarter to put points on the board.”
Since being named the starter exactly four weeks ago Monday, Foles has repeated that practice, not games, is where the Bears can find their offensive mojo.
“There’s no magic potion to this,” he said. “It’s just, continue to have these conversations, implementing little changes that will help us. And then ultimately going out there and executing.”
Doing so — quickly — will allow the 5-1 Bears to play to their strengths: their high-octane, high-priced pass-rush and an increasingly opportunistic defense. The Bears totaled five takeaways in their first five games — and three in Week 6.
“If you’re getting a fast start, you’re usually moving the chains and keeping our defense off the field for a rest,” Nagy said. “But then if you get the lead and score points, now the team becomes a little bit more one-dimensional, and now they can pin their ears back, and that’s where we can become more opportunistic.
“That’s where we want to live in that world a little bit more.”
They tried to in the first quarter last year in Los Angeles — and failed spectacularly.
Eddy Pineiro missed a 48-yard field goal to end the first drive of their “Sunday Night Football” contest, but the Bears got the ball back on the next play when Eddie Jackson forced then-Rams running back Todd Gurley to fumble. Spooked by his kicker, Nagy then decided to go for it on fourth-and-9 rather than try a 49-yarder. Mitch Trubisky threw an incomplete pass. Six plays later, linebacker Roquan Smith picked off Jared Goff. Pineiro capped that drive by missing a 47-yard kick.
The Bears held the ball for 11 minutes, ran 28 plays — and were tied at zero at the end of the first quarter. They trailed 10-0 at halftime. By the end of the game, Chase Daniel was under center because the Bears said Trubisky was hurt. The nation, though, saw the Bears’ quarterback debacle for what it was.
The Bears new quarterback can change that narrative — even though Foles spent the past week railing against the need for style points. He’d rather win ugly than lose pretty.
“Two of the games we won—and one I didn’t play in but one I did—we had like a 99-point-something [percent] chance of losing that game at one point in the fourth quarter,” Foles said. “That doesn’t happen where you come back from that, ever. Like, twice?”
With a fast start, though, the Bears wouldn’t have to worry about performing another fourth-quarter miracle.
