Evidence of the Bears\u2019 consistently slow starts is everywhere.<\/p>\n
It has now been seven weeks since they last scored on their opening possession.<\/p>\n
Quarterback Caleb Williams? He has a .585 completion percentage in the first halves of games (which ranks 29th in the league) and an 85.5 passer rating (26th), per TruMedia.<\/p>\n
Two weeks ago, at Lambeau Field, the Bears didn\u2019t reach the end zone until their sixth possession. They had only six first downs and 23 passing yards before halftime and their lone scoring drive was a field goal march that required 14 plays and more than eight minutes.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s been an ongoing push to get things rolling more quickly. And this week, Bears coach Ben Johnson emphasized the need for Williams to find his aggressive and confident mindset right away to catalyze a fast start.<\/p>\n
\u201cA big part of what we do in our pregame routine is making sure the first series isn’t a warm-up series,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cWe’re starting hot. \u201cOffensive philosophy-wise, we talk about having 65-70 bullets in a game. And we can’t afford to waste any of those plays trying to get the engine started.\u201d<\/p>\n
Against a Packers defense that\u2019s without star pass rusher Micah Parsons, how quickly the Bears start that engine may be pivotal in the game\u2019s result.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Evidence of the Bears\u2019 consistently slow starts is everywhere. It has now been seven weeks since they last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,593,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-361522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}