The Chicago Bears extended their win streak to three games and improved to 7-3 for the season behind one of their best defensive performances of the year. Holding the Vikings to 265 total yards and only 17 points, the Bears' defense has shown significant signs of improvement. The pass rush, on the other hand, wasn't particularly productive, finishing the game with zero sacks and receiving a poor 56.7 grade on Pro Football Focus.
This has been an issue for the Bears all season, and they attempted to address it at the trade deadline by giving up a sixth-round pick to the Browns for Joe Tryon-Shoyinka. After an encouraging start in his Bears debut in Week 10, however, Tryon-Shoyinka barely saw any action on Sunday, playing only three defensive snaps.
Joe Tryon-Shoyinka Fails to Crack the Rotation After Promising Start
The fact that Tryon-Shoyinka wasn't able to see the field more in a game where the Bears failed to generate any pressure against the Vikings' offensive line is not ideal. The 26-year-old defensive end had played 16 defensive snaps in his debut, so he must be disappointed in being an afterthought on Sunday.
The main reason for this was the return of Dominique Robinson. After missing the previous three games with an ankle injury, Robinson played 12 defensive snaps in Week 11 and received an underwhelming 47.7 defensive rating on PFF. Austin Booker and Montez Sweat played the majority of the snaps in Week 11, with the former playing a season-high 93% of the team's defensive snaps. That left very little playing time for the rest of the defensive end rotation, as the Bears rarely play defensive schemes with three defensive ends. Head coach Ben Johnson tries to generate pressure from Grady Jarrett, who played 30 pass rush snaps and was the most effective player for Chicago on that front on Sunday.
The Bears are still a bottom-ten defensive unit in the league, both in terms of points and yards allowed. Dennis Allen's unit forces more turnovers than any other team in the NFL, and that remains the most important part of Chicago's defense. In terms of generating pressure on the quarterback, however, they lag behind the rest of the elite teams in the league. Tryon-Shoyinka was brought in with the hopes of giving the Bears a boost on that end, but it looks like he won't have much of a chance to provide that for Chicago.