“I’d think we’d rather win ugly than lose pretty!”
-Nick Foles
The Carolina Panthers forced a three-and-out to get the ball back with 1:32 left in Sunday’s game. However, as QB Teddy Bridgewater faced the Bears defensive pressure, he hurriedly threw a pass across the middle of the field towards DJ Moore that was deftly plucked by S DeAndre Houston-Carson.
The Chicago Bears have continued to find ways to keep the opposition out of the end zone, as they wrestled the division lead away from the Packers, who lost to the same Tampa team that Chicago defeated on October 9th,.
Nick Foles reflected on the ‘ugly’ win, “Ultimately in the NFL it’s about winning games,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how you do it. It just matters that you get it done. If you put up fifty points and you lose a game, those fifty points don’t mean anything. So right now we’re winning games, were’ playing together as a team. We can improve, I think that’s exciting. If we were winning those games and playing perfect and they were this tight and we were playing were perfect. What do you do? Where do you improve? Right now we have a lot of areas to improve offensively once again. But we are figuring out ways to score and get points and move the ball. We can fix what we’re doing. It doesn’t happen overnight.”
Matt Nagy is still bothered by the sluggish offense, but noted, “In the second half, we had two ten-play drives. We had scoring drives that took up four minutes both of them for a touchdown and field goal. The part where we could be better was the third and three we didn’t convert and the third and two to close the game out.”
Allen Robinson concurred, “it’s not as good as we want it to be. There were moments in that game where I thought offensively we played really well. We had a couple of drives especially in that second half. We came out we moved the ball down the field. We got points.. I thought we played really well throughout the second half. We just got to finish better.”
Nagy did praise the mental toughness of his guys. “When Carolina had a first down on fourth and three, then we end up holding them to a field goal. The mental fortitude to stick together. They’re just creating havoc. And you feel that. It’s putting us in a great spot to win these games. I believe there’s something special here with these players. It’s winning football. I wish you could have been on the plane flying home with us last night. We were rockin’ and rollin’. We’re so fired up right now It’s a great feeling.”
A dream come true for me. Pretty sweet!
– TE Cole Kmet on his first NFL touchdown catch.
On Monday, Nagy tried to put the victory in perspective. “We have these conversations with the players in the locker room, right after the game. And you realize the care that they have. You realize how much better they want to get. And you know they’re going to work hard. And also, the conversations that you have of our own standards and expectations. Right now With the offense struggling, we understand that. And we want what everyone else wants. How are we going to get to that point. And there’s a frustration because it’s not happening right away. We know that. But we gotta make sure that we just to continue plugging away. We communicate. We talk through that. We’re excited that being five and one and being that way on offense, that gives us a lot of excitement for when we do get that offense going.”
Robinson summed up the mood of the offense. “As perfect as we want it to be, it may be choppy sometimes. We’ve got to play well at the right moments. That’s what’s most important about this league. We have a chance to be an extremely good team. We haven’t yet played our best ball at all. We haven’t had that really breakout explosive game, but that’s just around the corner.”
Next up for Chicago, a tough road trip out to Southern California to face the Rams on Monday Night Football.
