Bear Down, Nerd Up: Chicago Bears stat breakdown and useless info, Week 9

It was another quintessential 2020 Bears performance Sunday in Nashville, Tennessee. The Bears defense was as good as it could possibly be without creating turnovers. The offense was about as bad as it could possibly be for three quarters.

What else is new, right?

Just how bad is the Bears offense right now? Let’s take a peek in Bear Down, Nerd Up, our weekly Chicago Bears stat breakdown.

How bad can it really be?: Here are some of the Bears' overall rankings out of 32 NFL teams:

• 19.8 points per game (28th)
• 317.8 total yards per game (29th)
• 82.3 rushing yards per game (32nd)
• 235.4 passing yards per game (21st)
• 19.8 first downs per game (27th)
• 32.26% on third-down conversions (31st)
• 50% red zone touchdown conversion (30th)

I don’t mean to torture you, Bears fans. Frankly, each of those numbers is bad.

The Bears have seven games – eight weeks with the bye – to figure this out. The trade deadline has passed, so by and large the personnel the Bears have now is the personnel they’ll have to roll with.

Head coach Matt Nagy said again Monday that he’s not opposed to giving up play calling duties. If that were to happen, he's not going to announce it.

“I’m looking at all that right now,” Nagy said. “I meant what I said [Sunday]. Where we’re at right now as an offense, and struggling the way we are, you have to look at everything, including myself.”

The fact is, changing the play caller brings no guarantee of success. Game planning for the offense is a collaboration between Nagy, offensive coordinator Bill Lazor, passing game coordinator Dave Ragone, quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo and others on the offensive staff.

That collaboration isn’t going to change if the play caller changes. The playbook isn’t going to change even if the play caller changes. The manner in which the Bears use it might, but is that really enough to create any meaningful change with the season more than half over?

“The amount of preparation and the amount of time that goes into it, to give your team the best chance of success is very time consuming,” said DeFilippo, who called plays for Minnesota in 2018. “It’s a hard job, but you trust your preparation. All you can do as a play caller is put all your time and energy into preparing not only the players, but preparing your mind and preparing yourself for the certain situations that may happen in the game.”

It's hard to see Nagy giving up play calling. He's an offensive-minded coach. From his perspective, you only get so many shots at being a head coach in the NFL. You might as well do what got you here – do it your way.

The numbers listed above, though, speak for themselves.

Analyzing the Bears' playoff chances: FiveThirtyEight gives the 5-4 Bears a 57% chance to make the playoffs and a 17% chance of winning the NFC North. It projects the Bears to finish 9-7.

ESPN's Football Power Index is less enthusiastic about the Bears' chances. It gives the Bears a 34.6% chance to make the playoffs. It projects an average of 8.1 wins for the Bears.

If the season ended today, the Bears would be eighth in the NFC, one spot out of the playoffs.

Speed demon: The Bears fastest ball carrier Sunday was – drum roll please – Barkevious Mingo. The outside linebacker rushed for 11 yards on a fake punt in the second quarter. It gained a first down and was the most exciting offensive play of the first half.

According to NFL Next Gen Stats, Mingo reached 20.33 miles per hour on the run. It was the 11th-fastest run of Week 9 in the NFL. Bears outside linebackers coach Ted Monachino said he had a brief conversation with Mingo after what was Mingo's first career carry.

“He remembered it just like all of us do when something great happens, you remember every little detail of it,” Monachino said.

Where's the rush?: ESPN analytics uses a metric it calls "sacks created." A player is credited with a sack created if he is the first player to win the matchup against an offensive lineman, rather than the player who finishes the sack.

ESPN analytics writer Seth Walder tweeted a list of the NFL's leaders in "sacks created." The top three on the list are quite familiar names: the Rams' Aaron Donald (11 sacks created), the Browns' Myles Garrett (9) and the Bears' Khalil Mack (8).

While Mack has only 6.5 sacks on the season (tied for eighth in the NFL), he has helped to create an additional sack and a half.

The Bears did create three sacks Sunday, but none went to Mack in the statsheet. Mario Edwards Jr., Bilal Nichols and Roquan Smith each had one sack.

Outside linebacker Robert Quinn saw his biggest share of snaps this season with 75% of defensive snaps (41 total snaps).

“I’m trying to give him more of an opportunity to get into a rhythm,” Monachino said. “Again, as we go back and look at it, the most important thing is that we get him doing what he does best most often."

Further proof that passer rating is misleading: If you hadn't watched Sunday's game and looked only at the stat line, it was Nick Foles' best game of the season. Such a perception doesn't pass the eye test.

Foles finished the day 36-for-52 passing for 334 yards and two touchdowns.

His 99.4 passer rating was his highest of the season and his highest throughout a full game since he recorded a 102.1 rating in Week 16 of 2018 with the Philadelphia Eagles (Foles had a 132.8 passer rating in Week 1 of 2019 with Jacksonville but played only 11 snaps before breaking his collarbone – so I'm throwing that one out).

A look at ESPN’s “total QB rating” shows a much different picture. Passer rating, the NFL’s official stat, simply looks at the raw numbers in the stat sheet. ESPN’s total QB rating takes into account situational difficulty and strength of opponent, among other factors.

Foles’ 39.7 total QB rating was only slightly better than his 39.5 against the Rams two weeks earlier. According to total QB rating, Foles’ worst game came against the Indianapolis Colts in Week 4 (35.5).