Bears, Case Keenum cruise past Eagles in 27-7 victory
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How did the Bears beat the Eagles with third-string quarterback Case Keenum?
Welcome to the Athletic Football Show, brought to you by the U.S. Bank Smartly Visa Signature Card. I'm Robert Mays. What a night for the Chicago Bears. Me and Derek dug into it, but just an immensely satisfying performance from somebody who has watched this team for a very long time. what we saw from Case Keenum, Ben Johnson, Dennis Allen, that entire group. A huge win for the Bears, a win with their third-string quarterback that I'm sure not a lot of people saw coming. Let's get to that conversation with me and Derek right now.
I was thinking about this late in the fourth quarter and going through all of the other potential options. I don't know if that's the most satisfying win I can remember from a Bears team, but it's in the conversation. Not exciting. They had more exciting wins last year, but just satisfying. When you think about the performance, the plan, how everything was put together considering the circumstances, I'd be hard-pressed. to think of a game that was more satisfying top to bottom when you watch the people that are in charge of the football team that you root for and feel that level of simultaneous pride and comfort in the job they are capable of doing than what just happened tonight for the Chicago Bears.
I mean, if Case Keenum, their third quarterback, by the way, who was like 40 years old, has started four games since COVID happened. He's 38. Take it easy, mister. I'm 29. I'm going to round up. It counts. At least in football years, that man is 40. If that particular set of circumstances started a game for the Bears at any point before the last two seasons, it would have been a shit show. I've seen that game a
hundred times.
That's what I'm saying. We've all seen that game a hundred times. Second or third quarterback coming off the bench against what is supposed to be a good Eagles defense, and we can talk about whether or not that is true or not. But again, all of those circumstances, for him to... Not only them like get by in the game, like I could have imagined a scenario where they get by and the run game looks good. And, you know, you just get a couple of cool plays from Luther Bird and Colson Loveland, whatever. Case Keenum made like five or six like genuinely really good throws, especially under pressure. And so got away with some stuff in terms of the tight window stuff. But like that's what his entire magical 2017 season was like.
That's just kind of what he does.
If you had told me the Bears would finish with a plus 50% success rate and win this game by multiple scores, the first place my mind would have gone is they ran the ball extremely well. It looks like it did against the Eagles last year. And to the Eagles' credit, and they talked about this all week, if you heard the guys on the Eagles, Jordan Davis, everybody, They talked about having to rewatch that film of the Black Friday game last year over and over again in order to account for how they were going to try to stop this team. And they were ready for it. And to their credit, that was true. In the first half of this game, the Bears had 13 carries for 27 yards. They had a 23% rushing success rate. And you could see why.
The Eagles did a fantastic job in the first half, mixing up fronts. We got some 5-1 stuff. We got some 6-1 stuff. How you watch Makuba specifically, when they're running the ball, he was flying off the roof. And the Bears really had no answers for how the Eagles were trying to defend the ground game. But if you're going to play it that way, you're going to leave vulnerabilities on the back end, and that's exactly what happened. I mean, how many times in this game are they're using play action and you feel Raymond on some sort of crosser and you're watching Makuba trying to sprint backwards to get underneath those routes? And so they weren't able to run the ball, but their ability to throw the ball off of play action was a byproduct of how the Eagles were trying to account for that.
In this game, Case Keenum finished 11 of 12 for 128 yards on play action
throws. It was automatic.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How did the Bears beat the Eagles with third-string quarterback Case Keenum?
0:00–4:08
2
How did Case Keenum and play action exploit the Eagles' defensive strategy?
4:08–8:39
3
Which early mistakes nearly derailed the Bears' upset win?
8:39–12:27
4
How did Dennis Allen adjust the Bears' defense at halftime?
12:27–15:58
5
Why did the Eagles' passing offense struggle against Chicago?
15:58–20:47
6
What concerns remain about the Eagles' defense and pass rush?
20:47–25:11
7
What does the win mean for the Bears while Caleb Williams is injured?
25:11–30:16
8
How did the Bears' backup-quarterback win restore hope for the season?
30:16–32:56
Speakers
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