Why the Chicago Bears Are Protecting Justin Fields

NFL Week 3 - The Chicago Bears threw barely any passes against San Francisco in Week 1, but we chalked it up to a rainstorm. Then they threw even fewer against Green Bay in Week 2, but we wrote it off as a fluke. After a third consecutive game where they did everything they could to hide Justin Fields, however, it's becoming clear: this year's Bears are turning into one of the most run-heavy teams in NFL history.

Fields threw 17 passes against Houston on Sunday, matching his sum from the 49ers game. In between, he only threw 11 passes against the Packers. That's a total of 45 Chicago pass attempts in three games, 10 fewer than any other team—and that's before Monday Night Football, when the New York Giants (55 passes in their first two games) face the Dallas Cowboys (73). By the time the sun rises on Tuesday morning, the Atlanta Falcons will probably be next to last in passes thrown with 79—still 75% more than the Bears. (Indeed, the Giants threw 37 passes on Monday night, while the Cowboys threw 31.)

Meanwhile, Chicago has run the ball 104 times, second only to the 114 of Cleveland. (These are all official NFL totals, which means defensive pass interference penalties don't count, but spikes and kneeldowns do. And quarterback scrambles count as rushing plays—Fields has run 27 times for 95 yards this season, including 79 yards on 10 scrambles.) That's more than twice as many runs as passes, but we haven't counted sacks yet, and Fields has somehow taken 10 sacks despite dropping back only two or three times per drive. Only four quarterbacks have taken more sacks this year. This somewhat explains Chicago's reluctance to pass—Fields will never get any better if he's stuck in a body cast.

That leaves us with 104 runs and 55 pass plays for the Bears, a run/pass ratio of 1.89, by far the highest in the league. In fact, over a full season, it would be the highest for any NFL team in 45 years, since the Raiders and Patriots both hit it in 1977. But this undersells how run-heavy the Bears are compared to their peers because it's ignoring what the rest of the league has been doing. Thanks largely to the pass-happy attacks in the AFL, there were slightly more passes than runs in the 1960s, but that stopped in a big way after the merger, with the NFL's average run/pass ratio hitting 1.22 in the 1970s. It has been steadily dropping since then, to 0.90 in the 1980s, 0.80 in both the 1990s and 2000s, and 0.72 since 2010. So far in 2022, the average NFL team has a run/pass ratio of 0.68, which would be the lowest of any season in our data, and that's even with the Bears skewing things heavily toward the run.

The top 30 teams in raw run/pass ratio all played in the 1950s or 1970s, with the 1950 New York Giants leading the way at 2.75, but this year's Bears stand out as a run-heavy team in an outrageously pass-heavy era. Dividing Chicago's run/pass ratio by the 2022 average gives us a Modified Run/Pass ratio (or MoRP, which is really fun to say) of 2.77, which is absolutely unheard of. Those 1950 Giants (2.05) are the only other team to double their league's average run/pass ratio. Quite a few teams of more recent vintage, however, appear right behind them. The 2004 Pittsburgh Steelers finish in second place with a MoRP of 1.91, along with the Jets of 2009 (1.85) and the Ravens of both 2019 (1.82) and 2020 (1.76). You can't really compare Lamar Jackson to anyone else as a quarterback, but it's worth noting that those Steelers and Jets were both playing rookies at the position in Ben Roethlisberger and Mark Sanchez. This suggests that teams tend to go run-heavy when they're protecting younger passers.

What's even more unusual about Chicago's anemophobia is that they have often been playing from behind, scoring 52 points in three games while allowing 57. Simple linear regression of every team since 1950 tells us the Bears should have a MoRP of 0.98, passing slightly more and running slightly less than an average team this season. The difference between Chicago's expected MoRP and actual MoRP is 1.79, more than twice that of any team on record. The following team shows the top 12 teams in this category since 1950. The Bears are threatening a record set 50 years ago by … the Chicago Bears.

It turns out that run-heavy offenses, like deep dish pizza and Italian beef, are a Chicago tradition—Fields is likely to be the fourth Bears quarterback on this table, should he survive the year. At the top we find Bobby Douglass, a key contributor to the Bears' running game in 1972—his 968 rushing yards that year were a record for quarterbacks for 34 years until Michael Vick broke it in 2006, and surpassed since then only by Lamar Jackson (in both 2019 and 2020). Though Douglass had started 15 games across his first three seasons, 1972 was his first year as a full-time starter, showing again how teams like to protect young quarterbacks. The same holds true for Jack Concannon; after three years spent mostly on the bench in Philadelphia, he joined the Bears in 1967 and became a regular starter for the first time. He spent most of that year handing off to Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo, also running for 279 yards and three touchdowns himself. Jim McMahon was in his third season in 1984, and already racking up the injuries. Chicago's devotion to the run that year may have been driven by a devotion to keep McMahon upright—they actually had a higher run/pass ratio in the nine games he started (1.99) than in the seven games he missed (1.21).

It turns out that most quarterbacks here were also young and/or unproven. We already mentioned that Roethlisberger and Sanchez were rookies. So was Joe Ferguson with the Bills in 1973, when Orenthal James Simpson broke the 2,000-yard barrier. Charlie Conerly was in his second year as a starter in 1950; he would go on to finish second in MVP voting behind Johnny Unitas in 1959. Doug Flutie, who began his NFL career as a teammate of McMahon's in Chicago, was a starter for the first time in 1988 in New England.

The few veterans here are an odd mix. Sammy Baugh was in his last full season in 1951 before splitting time in 1952 with Eddie LeBaron … who would qualify on his own in 1958, when he made the Pro Bowl on a team that finished 11th out of 12 teams in pass attempts. As for Steve Grogan, he was a seasoned 29-year-old with the Patriots in 1982, the strike-shortened season likely skewing his team's statistics.

If teams that go run-heavy usually do so to protect inexperienced passers, does that mean teams that throw a lot are usually built around great quarterbacks? The list of the most pass-heavy teams since 1950 show the answer is a resounding "yes."

The run 'n' shoot Houston Oilers of the early 1990s dominate this table, finishing in first, second, eighth, and 12th place. In an era when most teams were still using split-back formations, and motion tight ends called H-backs were considered cutting edge, the Oilers got themselves a Hall of Fame quarterback and put him on the field with four wide receivers on virtually every snap. They weren't alone—the Detroit Lions and Atlanta Falcons both reached the playoffs in 1991 using similar schemes, and seasons when those franchises are simultaneously successful are rare indeed—but nobody took it to extremes like Warren Moon and the Oilers.

Not surprisingly, Moon is not the only Hall of Fame passer we see here—Dan Fouts, Dan Marino, and Tom Brady (just last year with the Buccaneers) also appear. So do Norm Van Brocklin and Bob Waterfield, who spent the 1950 season swapping in and out for the Rams. Tobin Rote is not in the Hall of Fame, but he won championships in both the NFL (1957 Lions) and AFL (1963 Chargers), and he deserves extra credit for the load he carried for the 1951 Packers—not only was he throwing the ball for one of the most pass-happy teams of all time, but he also ran 76 times for 523 yards and three touchdowns, leading Green Bay in all three categories.

Frank Tripucka is not in the Hall of Fame either, but he had a long, intriguing career. He spent six years in the NFL and seven in the CFL before joining the fledgling AFL in its first season in 1960. The most experienced quarterback in the early days of that league, it's no surprise that he was its top volume passer that season and again in 1962. He only played two games for Denver in 1963, then made a brief return to Canada before retiring. As for Tommy Kramer and Bill Kenney … look, you got me. Both had been starters for several forgettable seasons by the time their teams qualified for this list, and had done little to show they were more than average starters. Why the Vikings and Chiefs decided to let them go hog-wild, I have no idea. Kenney never made the top 10 in pass attempts again, spending the rest of his career in a never-ending duel with Todd Blackledge. Kramer at least stuck as Minnesota's starter for most of the 1980s, making the Pro Bowl and leading the league in passer rating in 1986.

Lastly, we should note that as of right now, the 2022 Buffalo Bills would finish on top of this table with a MoRP over expected of -0.627, the most pass-heavy offense on record when accounting for era and scoreboard. However, unlike Chicago, they're not likely to finish there by the end of the season—they're much closer to the teams in the second table than the Bears are to the teams in the first, meaning they're more likely to fall back to the pack as we get a larger sample size, and especially when the harsh winds start to blow off Lake Erie later in the year.