■ Four things to watch for as the Bears face the Vikings.
Chicago Bears defensive coordinator Chuck Pagano had a message for his group when talking about facing Minnesota Vikings running back Dalvin Cook onMonday night at Soldier Field: “What we’ve done in the past means squat,” Pagano said on a Zoom call with reporters Friday.
The Bears defense effectively shut down Cook in the three times he played them in 2018 and 2019. He averaged 2.53 yards per carry and 4.15 yards per catch in the three games, with a touchdown and a lost fumble.
With Pagano in his first season at the helm in 2019, Cook had 14 carries for 35 yards and six catches for 35 yards in the Bears’ 16-6 victory on Sept. 29.
“The guys did their job,” Pagano said of that effort. “They set good edges, we played square in the middle, we knocked them back, we tore off blocks, we tackledwell. We never really gave them an opportunity to get going. It’s got to be a lot of the same thing. But it’s a different year, different team, all that stuff that’s happened in the past has no significance on this game comeMonday night.”
Pagano of course wants his group on guard because Cook has been as hot as any running back in the NFL as he helped the Vikings to two straight victories.
Cook, in his fourth season, rushed for 206 yards and two touchdowns on 22 carries in a victory over the Detroit Lions on Sunday. That included a 70-yard touchdown run in which he shot through a hole and easily accelerated past three Lions defenders in pursuit. A week earlier, he had 30 carries for 163 yards, three rushing touchdowns and a receiving touchdown against the Green Bay Packers. He also had a 181-yard rushing game against the Tennessee Titans inWeek 3.
When asked what stood out to him about Cook’s performance the last two weeks, Vikings coach Mike Zimmer first pointed to the play of the offensive line and tight ends in the running game before acknowledging allCookdoeswell.
“It’s like when you’ve got a great punt returner, guys want to block for him,” Zimmer said. “But Dalvin, he sees things. He can accelerate so quickly to get to top speed. And he has great vision.”
This will mark the third week in a row the Bears are taking on one of the top running back threats in the league. First it was dual-threat New Orleans Saints star Alvin Kamara, who had 67 rushing yards and 96 receiving yards against them.
But the Bears run defense buckled down against the NFL’s leading rusher, DerrickHenry, in a loss to the Titans on Sunday. Henry, who has 946 rushing yards this season, had 68 yards on the ground, his second-lowest output in nine games this year.
Inside linebackers coach Mark DeLeone praised the group effort to bring him down while also noting 5-foot-9, 187-pound nickel back Buster Skrine looked like a “state-champion wrestler” tackling the 6-foot-3, 247-pound Henry for no gain on a secondquarter carry.
“When you play a back like Derrick Henry, you’ve got to swarm and you’ve got to get as many hats to him as you can on every single play,” DeLeone said. “The first guy in has got to hit him and he has to hold onto him, and then you’ve got to have two, three, four, five more guys swarm him, and I think we did that. It was a collective effort as a team to do that. Iwas really proud of our guys thewaywe tackled.”
The 5-foot-10, 210-pound Cook poses a different type of challenge than the one the Bears faced with Henry, but defensive lineman Bilal Nichols said the group is excited about the new task.
“Derrick is downhill. Once he gets to top speed, he’s hard to stop,” Nichols said. “Dalvin is more change of direction. Once he plants that foot, his ability to cut
back and just get vertical is, like, tremendous. And that’s what makes him such a great player. And his ability to also be able to break tackles and put pressure on guys in open space.
“For the last few weeks, we played some great running backs. We hadKamara. We had lastweek Derrick Henry, now this week Dalvin Cook. As a D-lineman, you look forward to those challenges.”
Safety Eddie Jackson said the key is to have multiple players “swarming around him” whenever Cook has the ball.
“Coming up not trying to make a big, explosive hit, just tackling him and getting him on the ground,” Jackson said. “Because sometimes you come up trying to make a big
hit, he can bounce off those tackles, and obviously you’ve seen him take it the distance.”
Cook pointed to Akiem Hicks, Khalil Mack, Roquan Smith and Danny Trevathan as the players who make the Bears run defense thrive in an interview with Vikings reporters Thursday.
But he also sounded up to the challenge.
“It’s a mixture of some big guys and some nifty linebackers,” Cook said. “But we have to go in there and match their physicality, not shying away from anything. This Monday night game is going to be about who is going to be the most physical, and I think we’ve got to bring our lunch pails Monday night.”