4 Takeaways from Chicago Bears’ 21-13 Win over Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Published by Bear Heiser on November 23, 2014
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Chicago Bears
The Chicago Bears did exactly what they needed to do Sunday against Lovie Smith, Josh McCown and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers: win.
By no means was the win pretty. Jay Cutler and the offense put zero points on the board in the first half for the third time in five weeks. To make matters worse, the Bears offense had zero first-half plays in the red zone. The Bears trailed 10-0 at the half.
“To me, it was very easy,” coach Marc Trestman said of the slow start. “Dropped balls, penalties, tipped balls – all of that. As I said to the guys at halftime, there was no one guy. We passed it around to everybody. You just can’t be efficient playing football that way, especially when you are dropping footballs and you have penalties.”
Halftime is when Trestman’s fortune changed, as the Bears scored 21 points in the third quarter, and the defense forced three turnovers, four in total, to seal the win.
Two weeks ago, this Bears team was left for dead, following a three-game losing stretch of which 133 points were allowed by the Mel Tucker-coached defense. Oh, how the times have changed.
The Bears have now won back-to-back games, allowing a total of 26 points during the short streak. The 26 points allowed is the fewest points allowed over a two-game stretch since Week 5 and Week 7 of the 2012 season.
Ignore the fact that the Bears have played the Minnesota Vikings and the Buccaneers in the past two weeks. What matters is the games serve as wins in the standings.
Cutler said it best after the game: “We’ll take two straight versus anybody.”
On that note, let’s go through the four takeaways from Sunday’s big win.
All quotes pulled from the postgame press conference transcripts unless otherwise noted. All stats pulled from game books provided by the Chicago Bears.
