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LAKE FOREST, Ill. -- The Chicago Bears believe they are built to run the football. The problem is that next to quarterback Mike Glennon's flurry of turnovers, the Bears’ failure to establish the run topped the list of concerns in the aftermath of Sunday’s blowout in Tampa. The most egregious statistic: Pro Bowler Jordan Howard gained 7 yards on nine carries. Let that sink in. The NFL’s second-leading rusher (1,313 yards) last year averaged 0.8 yards per rushing attempt. Tarik Cohen didn't fare much better, gaining 13 yards on seven carries. As a team, the Bears rushed for 20 yards on 16 attempts (1.3 yards per carry). “The thing is, and I wish there was a better answer [as to why we can’t run],” Bears offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains said. “The fact is it was one guy on each play. It wasn't one guy playing poor. We're going to face overpopulated boxes, and we know that. There's going to be seven, eight guys in the box every time and we have to execute better and it comes down to that.”  The Bears say Howard -- limited at practice with a shoulder injury -- is running the same way he did in 2016, when he became the second-youngest Bears running back to eclipse 1,000 yards in a season. Howard averaged 6.1 yards per carry in the final quarter of last year.
“Yes, sir. I do think he is,” Loggains said. “I think he’s running hard. We’ve got to do a better job up front and help him. It wasn’t one guy. It was falling off the block here or there and not finishing the way that we need to up front to help him. When you get him to the second level, he’s a good back. He’s going to break tackles. It’s tough for people to tackle him for four quarters. The Atlanta game [Howard rushed for 52 yards and one touchdown] we were much better than we were against Tampa.” Another conundrum for the Bears is that Howard frequently struggles to catch the football. The most glaring instance -- this season -- occurred at the end of regulation in Week 1 against Atlanta when Howard couldn’t corral a potential game-winning pass inside the 5-yard line. Howard followed that up by dropping the only ball intended for him in Week 2. He had seven drops as a rookie. How do the Bears fix that? “Keep working,” Loggains said. “There’s no magic formula. He’s working really hard at it. You get him involved in the screen game or do things that way but it’s just something, he has to keep working on it. We have to keep working on it as a group. I haven’t lost any confidence in his ability to help us out of the backfield as a pass-catcher as well.” One possible silver lining is that Howard didn’t really get going last year until his third game, when he rushed for 111 yards versus Detroit. Maybe the 2017 season follows a similar script. “Yeah, I definitely think we can still get back to [wearing people down with the run],” Howard said. “Last game we just got down by a lot so you can’t really run the ball then. I definitely feel like we still have that type of season [like last year].”
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