3 things the Chicago Bears need to fix on their bye week

When is a good time to have a bye week? Some believe getting to rest later in the season is more beneficial, as it allows a team to get fresh for the home stretch. Teams that have struggled in the first few months can use an early bye week to address poor play and come out swinging. Sometimes you just want to give injured players a chance to heal up.

It remains to be seen if the bye week is coming at a good time for the Chicago Bears this year. The team has won three straight games to move to 4-2 while playing its best football of the season, so the week off could be seen as a momentum killer. On the other hand, the Bears are banged up, especially in the secondary, so a week of rest could allow them to get closer to full strength before a rookie quarterback showdown with Jayden Daniels and the Commanders.

Matt Eberflus has to be happy with how his team has rebounded from a 1-2 start, but being a member of the NFC North in the year 2024 means that you can't take your foot off the gas for even a second, lest you be left behind by the Vikings, Lions and Packers.

Here are three things the Bears should be working on during their bye.

Bears bye week fix No. 1: Figure out how to play their best football on the road

If this Bears season was a Charles Dickens novel, it would be called A Tale of Two Schedules. The first half of Chicago's slate is arguably the easiest in the league, and so far the Bears have taken advantage. The Rams, Panthers and Jaguars are a combined 3-14, so while it's encouraging that the Bears have taken care of business against those teams and looked good doing it, things are about to toughen up in a big way.

Six of the Bears' final eight games are against division opponents, and the other two are against the 49ers (who are dinged up now but should be much closer to full strength by then), and the Seahawks, who will have had months to acclimate to new coach Mike Macdonald's system.

We don't yet know if the Bears are capable of looking good against quality teams. The only such game they've played to this point was against the Texans, and that resulted in a frustrating 19-13 loss. Not coincidentally, that game was on the road, as was their Week 3 loss to the Colts.

Dating back to last season, the Bears have won eight straight games at Soldier Field, but they've really struggled on the road. That's a problem, because not only is the schedule about to get much more difficult in terms of the quality of teams the Bears will face, six of the final 11 games are on the road.

The Bears need to figure out how to prosper when they're not in the friendly confines of Soldier Field, and the bye is as good a time as any to do that. Blast some artificial crowd noise during practice, require the offense to use a silent count, do whatever it takes to become road warriors down the stretch.

Bears bye week fix No. 2: Clean up the run defense

Even while playing through injuries, the Bears have been superb on defense. They've been opportunistic, forcing the second-most turnovers (13) in the league, and they rank top-six in passing yards, third-down percentage, and points allowed per game.

If there's one area that doesn't feel as rock solid as the rest, it's the run defense. That isn't to say that the Bears don't have a passable run defense — they do. They rank 11th in the league with 112 rushing yards allowed on the year, but compared to 2023 when they allowed only 86 per game, it feels like a lot.

It's been impossible to tell which Bears run defense is going to show up on any given week. Tony Pollard of the Titans ran for 82 yards against them in Week 1, but then they shut down Joe Mixon and the Texans one week later. Jonathan Taylor and his 110 yards on the ground put the Bears away in Week 3, then Kyren Williams and Chuba Hubbard each eclipsed 90 yards in the two games after that. It seemed like time to panic, but then the Bears held the Jags to only 68 yards on the ground as a team last week.

The rest of the schedule is packed with quality rushing teams. The Commanders will present a unique challenge in Week 8, as they not only have Brian Robinson Jr. and Austin Ekeler toting the rock, they also have Jayden Daniels using his legs to great effect. The Cardinals have James Conner and Kyler Murray. The Vikings have Aaron Jones, who has spent years tormenting the Bears as a member of the Packers. Green Bay now has Josh Jacobs, who is also no picnic to stop. The Niners can run it with anyone, and Christian McCaffrey should be back by time the teams face in Week 14. Then there's the Lions, who have former Bear David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs.

The Bears need to get back to stopping the run the way they did last year if they hope to slow down the high-powered offenses that are looming.

Bears bye week fix No. 3: Make sure Caleb Williams has time to throw

In the words of the great Dick Vitale, Caleb Williams has been awesome with a capital "A" during the current three-game winning streak. He's getting the ball out quickly and accurately, he's fitting it into tight windows, and he's going through his progressions and finding receivers downfield. For Bears fans that have been waiting their entire lives for a quarterback that could do all of these things, it's been an out-of-body experience.

Caleb has been a diaper dandy for sure, but he also owes a lot of his success to a huge leap in offensive line play. The offensive line looked like the worst in the league through three weeks, but they've turned the corner with a vengeance. How much of that is due to actual improvement, though, and how much should be attributed to playing three of the worst defenses in the NFL?

We're about to find out, because as we've gone over, the schedule is about to take a turn. It starts with the Commanders next week. Washington doesn't have a ton of talent on defense, but they're coached by Dan Quinn, who is known for running a lot of stunts and exotic blitzes, the exact thing that the Texans used to sack Caleb seven times in Week 2.

The real test will come in the two games against the Vikings. Minnesota defensive coordinator Brian Flores has been putting opposing quarterbacks in hell by disguising coverages and blitzing from every angle, which is a huge reason why the Vikings have shocked the league by jumping out to a 5-0 start.

Caleb's decision-making has been more comparable to a five-year vet than a rookie that's only a handful of games into his career. If the line can continue protecting him the rest of the season, there's no telling just how good he can be.