What We Saw: Week 8

The What We Saw team recaps everything you missed from a wild Week 8 in the NFL

Ben Brown
What We Saw A Year Ago
Series Navigation
Introduction
Ravens @ Buccaneers
Broncos @ Jaguars
Panthers @ Falcons
Bears @ Cowboys
Dolphins @ Lions
Cardinals @ Vikings
Raiders @ Saints
Patriots @ Jets
Steelers @ Eagles
Titans @ Texans
Commanders @ Colts
49ers @ Rams
Giants @ Seahawks
Packers @ Bills

Bears @ Cowboys

Final Score: Cowboys 49, Bears 29

Writer: Michael James (@MikeoftheFF on Twitter)

 

The #1 rushing offense in the league with the Chicago Bears visited AT&T Stadium in Arlington TX to play the Dallas Cowboys and their defense that is allowing the second-fewest rushing scores this season.  Both teams entered this matchup in third place in their respective divisions.  The Bears are coming off their upset victory at New England and looked to continue their surprising offensive outburst into today’s game against the defense of Dallas that just held the Lions to their second-fewest points scored in a game on the season.

Chicago won the toss so Dallas took the opening kickoff 75 yards in 11 plays, mostly on the back of Tony Pollard‘s 42 combined yards, capped off by a Dak Prescott 7-yard keeper for the touchdown putting Dallas on the board for 7 points.  Chicago answered by opening up with a deep shot downfield on their first play of the game, but the ball was underthrown for the incompletion.  Unfortunately, an offensive penalty put them too far back and they failed to convert a third and long, resulting in the Bears punting it away.  The Cowboys gained 30 yards on four straight passes to their tight ends and capped the 69-yard drive with a 21-yard strike to CeeDee Lamb for the touchdown to add seven more points to their lead.

 

 

Chicago answered back with a drive that went 75 yards, 68 of them on the ground with Justin Fields running in for a 3-yard touchdown. Ten of the 12 plays were kept on the ground.  In other news, if you had Kevin Burkhardt on the broadcast using the word “Shan’t” on your bingo card, congrats.  Dallas apparently took Chicago’s rushing drive personally, answering back with a similar drive. The Cowboys gained 51 of their 75 yards on the ground, including 25 from Prescott.  Pollard shot the gap for an 18-yard touchdown run to put the Cowboys back up by 14.  The touchdown trading would come to a halt after the Bears tried a very odd play of a forward pass into a backward pass, something that would make Cowboys’ offensive coordinator Kellen Moore jealous.  The play resulted in a procedure penalty and the Bears punted the ball away.

 

 

Dallas didn’t let up.  Slicing up the secondary for six of eight plays pass attempts, Lamb has 37 of the 54 yards culminating in a 1-yard touchdown pass from Prescott to Jake Ferguson to increase their lead to 21 points.  The Bears began their drive as expected, with six rushes in a row to get them to midfield, and then changed it up by throwing it three of the next four plays unexpectedly.  Fields launched a bad pass that was picked off by Trevon Diggs, however, it was nullified by a roughing the passer penalty.  With the new set of downs, Fields threw a strike for 17 yards to N’Keal Harry for the touchdown to cut the lead to 14.

 

 

Prescott took the opening play and threw an absolute laser to Eddie Jackson for the interception, putting the Bears in scoring range as the clock was winding down.  The Dallas defense held and Cairo Santos put it through to take us into the half, Cowboys 28 Bears 17 with Chicago looking to get the ball back in the second half.

 

 

After both teams traded a few punts, the Bears narrowly avoided a fumble and use a 19-yard pass to Darnell Mooney to march into Dallas territory.  This would set up a power run by Khalil Herbert breaking through to go 12 yards for the touchdown.  Fields was caught looking for the receiver on the 2-pt conversion and got leveled to keep the Dallas lead at five points.  Prescott took the ball back and connected with Dalton Schultz for 44 yards on the drive.  This set the Cowboys up for a 7-yard run by Pollard for the touchdown to rebuild the lead to 11.  On the Bears’ next drive, on 3rd and 11, Micah Parsons was blocked past Fields and was now behind him.  The pass was completed to David Montgomery for 13 yards and he fumbled it.  Somehow Parsons is the one who recovers it and Fields decided to jump over Parsons instead of making contact to count as down.  Parsons proceeded to get up and run it into the end zone to put the Cowboys up another seven points.  The absolute speed of Parsons to run that fumble down given where he was when the ball was thrown is hard to put into words, not to mention the fact he returned it for a touchdown.

 

 

After Mooney took the team to midfield, Chicago ran it seven times in a row to get to the Dallas 10-yard line, setting up the play-action to find Cole Kmet in the end zone for a 10-yard touchdown pass.  The 2-point conversion pass fell incomplete, and so the lead was cut to 13.  Dallas kept their next drive completely on the ground, and Pollard accounted for 72 of the 79 yards, high-stepping his way past the line to take it to the end zone for his 3rd touchdown on the day.  The Bears pulled their starters and this game went into the books, Dallas 49 Chicago 29

 

 

The over/under for this game was set at 43, and the Cowboys alone beat that.  Both teams went over 200 yards rushing on the day.  The Cowboys were a crazy 9-for-11 on third-down conversions, and the Bears were 2-for-3 on fourth-down conversions.

 

Chicago Bears

 

Quarterback

 

Justin Fields: 17/23, 151 Yards, 2 TD | 8 Carries, 60 Yards, TD
Trevor Siemian: 1/1, 5 Yards

 

Straight off his 82-yard rushing performance last week, Justin Fields leaves after the end of today’s game now on a rushing TD streak.  The first half saw him only throw it 11 times, for less than 50 yards. The majority of his rushing including the touchdown came before half-time.  It was a swap the other way around in the second half as the Bears would get to within five points and then watch the scoring gap widen again throwing it 12 times and only rushing twice more before the end of the game.  At the end of the day, he got you three total touchdowns ending with around 26 points for your fantasy team.  He had one interception nullified by a defensive penalty and almost had another one picked off.

 

 

Running Back

 

Khalil Herbert: 16 Carries, 99 Yards, TD
David Montgomery: 15 Carries, 53 Yards | 3 Targets, 3 Receptions, 22 Yards | 1 Fumble (Lost)
Trestan Ebner: 2 Carries, -5 Yards

 

It would appear that this backfield has become a full committee now, as the carries were split down the middle between Chicago’s two backs.  David Montgomery started the day as the lead back, seeing 6 of his 15 touches in the first quarter and all three of his receptions in the first half.  But he only got one touch in the fourth quarter as he yielded a lot of touches to Khalil Herbert, who out-carried him.  Herbert saw 10 of his 16 touches in the second half,  including his touchdown.  Interestingly, despite being down big in the second half, the run was never abandoned until the second-to-last drive of the game for the Bears.  (The final drive had the starters pulled).  This is the first time since 1968 that there have been three 200-yard rushing games in a row for the Bears.

 

 

Wide Receiver/Tight End

 

Darnell Mooney: 5 Targets, 5 Receptions, 70 Yards
N’Keal Harry: 2 Targets, 2 Receptions, 24 Yards, TD
Dante Pettis: 5 Targets, 4 Receptions, 18 Yards
Cole Kmet: 2 Targets, 2 Receptions, 11 Yards, TD
Equanimeous St. Brown: 3 Targets, 1 Reception, 6 Yards
Velus Jones Jr.: 3 Targets, 1 Reception, 5 Yards | 2 Carries, 33 Yards

 

There wasn’t a lot of passing today. Darnell Mooney caught all five of his targets and was very efficient averaging 14 yards per catch.  His longest of the day at 36 yards was an impressive catch and he did have a target on a two-point conversion attempt.  The other player with five targets was Dante Pettis, who did not get a lot of yards but had one end-zone target broken up on a well-defended play.  Equanimeous St. Brown did not do a lot on the day and spent a bit of time on the sidelines hurt before coming back, but did have one end zone target that was well defended.

We have a Cole Kmet sighting!  That’s pretty exciting.  Kmet came out positive on the dice roll that is starting a non-top 5 tight end in fantasy this year.  Velus Jones Jr had a deep ball thrown almost perfectly to him by Fields, but he dropped it inside the 10.  The only receiver that really left an impression on me was Mooney, but this is a run-first team and often that doesn’t leave a lot of receiver volume.  Fileds only threw it 23 times despite how far down Chicago was, and add on top of that those attempts were spread among six different targets.

 

 

Dallas Cowboys

 

Quarterback

 

Dak Prescott: 21/27, 250 Yards, 2 TD, INT | 5 Carries, 34 Yards, TD

 

Most of Dak Prescott‘s 250 yards on the day came in the first half, as he threw it 20 times with only four incomplete passes.  Prescott only threw it for three quarters, only attempting one pass in the 4th quarter.  Something you didn’t see too much of prior to today was Prescott rushing it.  He had 36 yards and a touchdown on three carries in the first half before the end of the game kneel downs took away some of those yards.  He ended the day with 25 points for your fantasy team, which is not bad for three-quarters of play.  His one intercept was blamed on CeeDee Lamb not coming back to the ball allowing the defender to jump the route for the pick.

 

 

Running Back

 

Tony Pollard: 14 Carries, 131 Yards, 3 TD | 1 Target, 1 Reception, 16 Yards
Malik Davis: 8 Carries, 23 Yards | 2 Targets, 2 Receptions, 18 Yards

 

You didn’t think they were just going to give ALL the carries to Tony Pollard now, did you?  Gotcha!  This was a trick (because it’s Halloween, duh) to fool people who didn’t watch the game and are only looking at this end-game box stat.  Hey wait, where are you going?  Come back!  Okay okay, Pollard only got most of the carries before getting pulled from the game for being deemed ‘unfair’ after he destroyed the Bears’ rushing defense with 9.4 yards per carry and three touchdowns.  With Ezekiel Elliott out for this game to just give him some extended rest, Pollard made the most of his opportunity going off for 130 yards on the day.  With both players tethering each other from a ‘must-start’ role on your team, if one of them is to miss time you can see why the other definitely needs to be started with 33 points for your fantasy team today.

Malik Davis was the backup, getting half his carries in the fourth quarter after Pollard was retired to the bench.  He almost had a touchdown that was overturned after he was ruled out of bounds a couple of inches shy of the goal line.  With no Robert Quinn, this Bears’ rushing defense had some critical mistakes and holes that were exploited by Pollard, so it might be something to keep an eye on for future backs against this defense.  Dallas’s excellent third-down efficiency was aided by the running game as four of the nine conversions were picked up on the ground.

 

 

Wide Receiver/Tight End

 

CeeDee Lamb: 7 Targets, 5 Receptions, 77 Yards, TD | 1 Carry, 1 Yard
Dalton Schultz: 7 Targets, 6 Receptions, 74 Yards
Michael Gallup: 6 Targets, 4 Receptions, 49 Yards
Peyton Hendershot: 2 Targets, 2 Receptions, 15 Yards
Jake Ferguson: 1 Target, 1 Reception, 1 Yard, TD
KaVontae Turpin: 1 Carry, 11 Yards

 

Dallas worked this game with many sets utilizing multiple tight ends in the play making it a little more difficult for fantasy owners, but the biggest benefactor of the day was Dalton Schultz. He now has back-to-back solid games with Prescott at quarterback.  However, it was Jake Ferguson, the tight end with the least targets of the three hauling in the touchdown. Peyton Hendershot added two more and was mere inches away from a blocked punt. I still like him if Schultz were to miss time.  I can’t even do that cute thing where you combine the team’s two tight-end names in hoping to combine their fantasy points because Dallas uses three tight-ends.  Jeylton Fergultzhot?   Oof.

Ceedee Lamb also came up with a solid day today with five catches on his seven targets for 77 yards and a touchdown.  There was a play where Dallas had all three tight ends in the game and Lamb lined up as a running back, but nothing came of it.  18 points should leave Lamb managers happy before they need to replace him next week for the bye.  With Noah Brown out, Michael Gallup came on strong to start the game with all four of his catches in the first half, including three targets on the first drive alone that got owners excited but faded away as the game went on.  Either way, much better than the monster game for an entire zero points last week.  Overall, not bad for this receiver group with only three quarters of passing to be had.

 

Series Navigation
Introduction
Ravens @ Buccaneers
Broncos @ Jaguars
Panthers @ Falcons
Bears @ Cowboys
Dolphins @ Lions
Cardinals @ Vikings
Raiders @ Saints
Patriots @ Jets
Steelers @ Eagles
Titans @ Texans
Commanders @ Colts
49ers @ Rams
Giants @ Seahawks
Packers @ Bills

One response to “What We Saw: Week 8”

  1. Jameis Winston says:
    October 31, 2022 at 8:59 pm

    Debbie Downer masterclass.

    Reply

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