CHICAGO _ It was less than 45 minutes after the Bears' 48-10 throttling of the Buccaneers and yet somehow Tarik Cohen's usually sharp recall was short-circuiting. The Bears running back had been asked to detail his touchdown catch _ a 9-yarder from Mitch Trubisky in the second quarter. But alas, Cohen was drawing a blank.
"The touchdown?" Cohen wondered. "The touchdown?"
Finally, it came to him. The route into the flat. The sharp cut back across the middle. The two steps he gained on linebacker Lavonte David. The Trubisky pass that gave Cohen his first touchdown this season and sent him into a celebratory backflip in Soldier Field's north end zone.
"Oh, yeah," Cohen remembered. "I saw what defense they were in. That was something we had been practicing against all week. We knew exactly what they were going to do. So I just break in and Mitch put the ball exactly where it needed to be."
Cut Cohen a break on that brief bout of forgetfulness. After all, his offense had scored six touchdowns that afternoon, the first time a Bears offense had accomplished that feat since December 1986. And Cohen himself had received a career-high 20 touches, turning those into a career-high 174 yards from scrimmage.
In the second quarter, he converted an out-and-up into a 35-yard reception. Later, he added a 29-yard catch, slipping behind linebacker Adarius Taylor up the right sideline. Cohen also broke off a 19-yard run, his longest of the day, using his vision and elusiveness to bounce outside.
This, in many ways, was the ultimate payoff. This was the multipurpose weapon Bears general manager Ryan Pace had wanted so badly to add to his roster 18 months ago. This was the valuable chess piece coach Matt Nagy had inherited turned loose in a system that can maximize his skills.
"We found the mismatches," Cohen said this week. "Coach Nagy really exposed that. Me against a linebacker is a really favorable matchup. And I think I was able to show everybody that I'm a talented guy."
