Chicago Bears: One clear offensive aspect led to win over Raiders

The Chicago Bears went on the road and beat the Las Vegas Raiders by a score of 20-9 in Week 5. It was a hard-fought game, overall, and the Bears now move to 3-2 after winning their second in a row.

Justin Fields got his third career start against the Raiders and finished with a modest 111 yards passing on 12-for-20 efficiency and his first regular season passing touchdown.

For the first half of the game, Fields was roughed up quite a bit. He was hit in the head on three occasions, and two of them were called penalties on the Raiders. Another one of the hits put on Fields got him real good near the kidney, and it was so bad that the training staff brought over a garbage can to him on the sideline if he were to throw up.

Fields’ ankle was also rolled up on in the second quarter and saw Andy Dalton replace him temporarily. The rookie came back in though, and played the remainder of the game. It was a gutsy performance from the kid, but that wasn’t the story of the game.

The Chicago Bears’ commitment to the run game, without David Montgomery, was the story of their win over the Raiders.

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Offensive coordinator Bill Lazor wasn’t perfect on this day. In fact, some wondered whether or not Matt Nagy took over play calling again in the second half. It looked as though the Bears were playing not to lose rather than playing to win.

Still, Chicago remained constant in one key area — the run game.

On the day, Chicago ran the ball 37 times for 143 yards. It was a similar recipe as last week against the Detroit Lions, where the Bears ran it 39 times.

Despite being down starting running back David Montgomery — who has become one of the best, more underrated backs in all of football — the Bears stuck with the ground game. Damien Williams took 16 carries for 64 yards, while rookie Khalil Herbert earned a surprising 18 carries for 75 yards.

Lazor never shied away from running the football, which was smart, considering he has a rookie quarterback that needs to be continually developed.

Back to Fields for a moment, because on their second-to-last scoring drive of the game, he was fantastic. Many felt that the Bears had to score a touchdown on that drive, when they were up 14-9 after the Raiders scored a touchdown of their own. Fields took them down slowly but surely, though, and took a ton of time off the clock.

On that drive, Fields had completions of 13 and 14 yards, and also took a deep shot to Allen Robinson which resulted in pass interference, extending the Bears’ drive.

It was a combination of Fields making some great throws when he needed to, along with a consistent dedication to the ground game from Lazor and his running backs, which led the Bears to a win on Sunday.

The defense played a stout game from start to finish, too, but offensively it was all about the run. Going forward, I fully expect Lazor to stick with the ground game and enable his rookie quarterback to get more and more comfortable, all while designing play-action passes that use his big arm.