September 25, 2026
Eric Hartline/Imagn Images via Reuters Connect
Will the Eagles have a better answer for stopping Bears RB D'Andre Swift this time?
The run game for the Chicago Bears is a prolific blend of scheme, personnel usage, blocking, athleticism and numerical advantages created using pre-snap motion.
Bears coach Ben Johnson is one of the few – maybe only – head coaches who designs and calls his own run game.
When he was offensive coordinator in Detroit for three seasons, the Lions featured one of the NFL's most prolific thunder-and-lightning rushing offenses behind David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs. The Lions had the NFL's fifth-best rushing offense in 2024 and fourth-best in 2025.
Last year, in his first season as Bears head coach, Chicago went from a five-win team to 11-6 and NFC North champs on the strength of a masterful ground game that ranked third in yards and yards per carry.
The Eagles felt the sting of Johnson's rushing attack on Black Friday, when the Bears rolled up 281 ground yards against them in a 24-15 loss at the Linc, with D'Andre Swift and Kyle Monangai combining for 255 of those yards and averaging nearly 6.4 yards per carry. They will have hoped to learn their lesson Monday night when they play the Bears again, this time at Soldier Field in Chicago.
That wasn't even Chicago's best rushing effort of the season; the Bears put up 283 on the Bengals, and also went over the 220-yard rushing mark a third time. They were one of just three NFL teams with three 220-yard rushing games.
This year, Johnson is leaning into the 13 personnel (1RB/1WR/3TE) groupings that became popularized last season by the success of the Rams and coach Sean McVay, whose offense Johnson has adapted into his playbook going back to his time presiding over Detroit's offense.
The Bears were one of several teams in April to draft an inline tight end on Day 2 despite already having one when they added Stanford's Sam Roush to a group that included veteran Cole Kmet and last year's 10th overall pick, Colston Loveland.
Through two weeks, the Bears and Falcons are tied for the NFL's third-highest 13 personnel rate, behind the Rams and Bills. Johnson has used at least two tight ends in his play calls at a 54-percent clip, the league's second-highest rate.
Bears TE Cole Kmet caught a TD against the Eagles last year.
The Bears are back atop the NFL leaderboard in rushing yards per game, averaging 212 on the ground, helped by 291 in Week 1 against the Panthers. But even their 134 yards and 4.3 per carry against the Vikings were impressive.
Personnel usage and a heavy under center wide zone run scheme aren't the only reasons for Chicago's success on the ground. The Bears also have some of the game's top interior linemen, including four-time Pro Bowl and four-time Super Bowl champ LG Joe Thuney along with Pro Bowl RG Jonah Jackson. Darnell Wright – picked one spot behind Jalen Carter – is a vicious, 325-pound road grader at RT.
Then you have Johnson's newest thunder-and-lightning RB combo of Swift and Monangai, with Swift's athleticism, quickness and vision making him a dangerous open-field weapon and with Monangai's downhill power being the perfect complement. Johnson's use of motion in the run game can either be eye candy for the defense or intentionally create mathematical blocking advantages on one side the field.
Swift, who rushed for 1,087 yards last year and averaged 4.9 yards per run, is averaging 5.0 yards per carry after two games. Monangai already has a 61-yard TD run and is averaging more than 7.0 yards per carry.
Although Chicago's under center run game is a weapon unto itself and not solely intended to enhance the play action pass game, it has surely helped that area, too. The Bears have the NFL's ninth-best EPA per pass from under center.
Chicago's offense will always begin with its ground game and its multiple tight end usage that creates larger surfaces and more gaps that defenses must be responsible to cover.
Those larger surfaces present both a physical and schematic challenge for Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio, who prefers to play both of his safeties deep – at least pre-snap – and often leans on his nickel defense/four-man front even against offenses that go heavier up front.
Will the Eagles be able to hold the Bears' rushing offense in check while staying in their nickel defense? Playing nickel would allow Cooper DeJean to man the slot and match up against Chicago's skilled pass-catching tight ends while also leveraging his physicality against the run game.
If Fangio decides to play more base defense, DeJean will remain at safety and be aligned further from scrimmage, and the Eagles would have one less body in the middle of the field on defense. The tradeoff would be that big DT Jordan Davis stays on the field, flanked by Jalen Carter and Moro Ojomo to comprise one of the NFL's most stout interior fronts.
The Vikings, who have seen Johnson twice a year with both Detroit and now Chicago, frequently used base defense and employed five-man and six-man fronts against the Bears to maintain gap integrity and get more bodies at the line of scrimmage.
On that run, the Bears not only reset the line of scrimmage against a six-man front but also got nice kick-out blocks from the C and RT to keep the LBs clean and off Swift, who went untouched for the first five yards of this seven-yard gain.
Here's another Swift run against a heavy box made possible by the scheme and Swift's ability to get very skinny through small holes:
The Vikings actually did a good job of stalemating the left-side blocks from Loveland (84) and LT Braxton Jones (70), but Swift snuck through the tiniest crevice between them to turn very little into a first down.
The Bears actually haven't moved the ball very efficiently out of 13 personnel – they have a -0.40 EPA per play when using three tight formations – but they have capitalized in the play action game from those looks.
Because all three of their tight ends have good hands, they can take advantage of defenses that have fewer defenders at the second and third levels because of devoting so much personnel to the line of scrimmage.
Here are two of their best pass plays out of 13 personnel:
Obviously, the Bears could be without QB Caleb Williams on Monday night, and you won't get the prolific play action pass game from either Tyson Bagent or Case Keenum, or even the lethal scrambling off play action that makes Williams one of the NFL's tougher matchups and somewhat Jalen Hurts-like in the freelance game.
But if the Eagles have another tough time stopping the run, it won't matter who the QB is for Chicago.
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