One of the loudest refrains you hear across the NFL is that nothing ever comes easy. These are all still professional football teams.
It was on clear display Sunday at Soldier Field when the reigning NFC Champion Atlanta Falcons needed every last second of the 60 minutes to pull out a 23-17 win over the Chicago Bears.
A seesaw game saw the 3-13 unit from 2016 keep pace with the high flying Falcons, and even gave them a chance to win. The Bears drove down inside the Atlanta five-yard line in the final minute of the game trailing by six points, but Dan Quinn’s defense made a goal line stand to preserve the win.
Brooks Reed sealed the game with a sack of Mike Glennon on 4th and goal.
The Falcons will head back to Georgia with a win, but also with lots of questions to be answered before they look to christen Mercedes-Benz Stadium with a win against the Green Bay Packers next Sunday.
The Bears will try to take some building blocks from the defeat into their first road trip of the 2017 season next Sunday, a visit to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Here’s a six pack of takeaways from Falcons @ Bears…
1. Tarik Cohen Is A Game Breaker
Without a doubt, the biggest thing that stood out was Chicago’s RB2. The rookie out of North Carolina A&T was slept on in the Draft, not being selected until the fourth round at 119th overall.
But at a scrappy 5’6” 181 pounds, his low center of gravity made tackling him a nightmare. Cohen picked up 113 yards from scrimmage on 13 touches, split at five carries and eight receptions. He picked up his first career touchdown midway through the fourth quarter with a 19-yard pass from Mike Glennon.
Jordan Howard is still the clear number one running back for Chicago, but Cohen posed a serious threat out of the backfield to make him a weapon in the offense.
2. Wes Schweitzer Had A Nightmare
The Falcons scored 540 total points in 16 regular season games last year, one of the highest totals in NFL history. One of the major reasons was continuity on the offensive line. The NFC champs were the only team in the league to start the same five offensive linemen in all 16 games.
After right guard Chris Chester retired over the offseason, Atlanta staged a camp battle between Wes Schweitzer and Ben Garland for the position.
Schweitzer won the job, but his game today was nothing short of a disaster. Chicago’s Akiem Hicks was teeing off on him all day, registering two sacks. A lack of push up front made good running plays few and far between, and hung Matt Ryan out to dry on more than one occasion.
The Falcons coaching staff will take a hard look at this during the week, and you might see Garland starting there come Sunday night vs. Green Bay.
3. The Bears Are Legit Up Front
Going hand-in-hand with Schweitzer’s poor game, the Bears were extremely strong in the front seven today. The aforementioned Hicks, Leonard Floyd, Jerrell Freeman, and Sam Acho reeked havoc on the 2016 MVP.
Coming into the season, this was billed as the strength of Chicago’s team, and they verified their credentials against the best offense in the league from a year ago.
4. Austin Hooper
I mean, what more can you say? He slipped free of the entire Chicago defense for an 88-yard fourth quarter touchdown, the longest touchdown by a tight end in a season-opening game in NFL history. Next time the Falcons got the ball, he skated through for another 40 yards to put the Falcons in range for a critical tack-on field goal. Expect more offense to work around him in the coming weeks.
5. The Falcons Were Good, But Not Great
This is still a work in progress. Sunday was the first game with new offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian, and there were obvious kinks that needed to be worked out. Late in the third quarter you could see Julio Jones having an animated discussion with Sarkisian after Atlanta settled for a field goal in the red zone.
On the positive side, Atlanta still has the best receiver in the NFL in Jones, the 2016 NFL MVP at quarterback, and had five different players snatch at least two receptions. That was the first time Steve Sarkisian has ever called plays in an NFL game, and Atlanta still showed flashes of last year’s greatness. The second quarter touchdown drive that went 83 yards, 11 plays, and ate seven minutes of clock was vintage 2016 Falcons.
On defense, it was a similar story. They caught lightning in a bottle on a few defensive series, most notably the impressive three straight punts they forced in the third quarter.
There were also mistakes. Corner Desmond Trufant looked extremely shaky at times, and the missed tackles will be an obvious point of concern for the coaching staff. But Chicago had nine possessions in this game, and only got points on three of them.
There is room for growth, but that is a strong baseline for the Falcons to work from.
6. The Bears Will Not Go 3-13 Again
On paper, the Bears lost 13 out of 16 games last season.
They aren’t that bad.
There were reasons to be optimistic on both sides of the ball in the Windy City, and even their special teams looked really good. Kicker Connor Barth nailed a 54-yard field goal, and punter Pat O’Donnell pinned Atlanta inside the 20 three times. Kevin White’s injury hurts, but the offense showed the ability to move the ball today, and John Fox’s defense was stout.
I see potential for Chicago to improve by a few wins in 2017.