Now the 2018 Chicago Bears will find out how they handle success.
After a close loss to Green Bay, the Bears got a nice win over Seattle. This Sunday, they face an Arizona team that’s been outscored 58-6 in the Cardinals’ first 0-2 start since 2005.
It’s a game Chicago is supposed to win, maybe even dominate.
“Just like last week when it was coming off a difficult loss, now the team is feeling good in the fact that we got a win,” first-year coach Matt Nagy said. “Sometimes, when you have that, with bad teams, complacency sinks in. That’s not what we want. We want our guys to continue to stay hungry, to realize how important it is to stack wins on top of each other.”
Arizona, under first-year coach Steve Wilks, is at the bottom of the league offensively and near the bottom defensively.
To try to boost an offence that got past midfield once – on the next-to-last play of the game – in last week’s 34-0 drubbing by the Rams in Los Angeles, Wilks and offensive co-ordinator Mike McCoy say they’ve scaled down the game plan, simplified things. They also say they want to get the ball to David Johnson more often.
While Chicago quarterback Mitchell Trubisky has been inconsistent, Arizona’s Sam Bradford has been mostly bad, struggling with his accuracy, usually a strength in his game.
“Sam is known to be able to put the ball where it needs to be,” Wilks said. “Regardless of why, we need to try to make sure we correct that moving forward. Is it the line? Is it just him? Is it the receivers? Again, everybody has a hand in it. Everybody’s working on their craft, trying to correct it.”
Now, Bradford, Johnson and the rest of the beleaguered offence must deal with Khalil Mack, who has two strip sacks and returned an interception for a touchdown in his two games since joining the Bears.
“You just turn the film on, you can see it,” Wilks said. “He’s doing some great things: a sack/fumble, interceptions for touchdowns, you name it. So, you’ve got to make sure you try to slow him down, neutralize him a little bit. I don’t know if you can stop him, but we’re going to do a great job of trying to create some things and hopefully we can try to slow him down a little bit.”