CHICAGO — On a day when the Steelers players elected not to let what coach Mike Tomlin called the “politics of the world” divide them, the Chicago Bears went out and did that for them.
They spread, split and divided the Steelers defense with a running play that has tormented their 3-4 defense for years, going back to the days of Bill Cowher.
It’s called a stretch play, and for good reason. It stretches a defense like a Slinky, getting the defenders to flow to one side of the field and creating gaps in the defense that can be as large as Lake Michigan. Or, as Bears running back Jordan Howard so deftly demonstrated with two plays in overtime, even allow the runner the freedom to cut back against the flow.
It is the staple play of any zone-blocking scheme, and the Bears ran it to textbook perfection with Howard and rookie Tarik Cohen against the Steelers.
“Terrible,” safety Mike Mitchell of the performance. “We were undisciplined and out of our gaps.”
The Bears did that all day to the Steelers defense, rushing for 220 yards — most since the Miami Dolphins had 222 yards in October — and gouging them with more double-digit runs than the Steelers have even come close to managing in three games. And the Steelers, as has been their history, really had no idea to stop it.
“It was the stretch and it was the cutback,” said defensive end Cam Heyward. “It’s about filling gaps. Whether it was me or other people, sometimes we just didn’t make the tackle. To be a good defense, you got to make those tackles, especially in overtime.”
The Bears started running the play early and they didn’t stop until they ran it three consecutive times in overtime to produce their 23-17 victory. They gouged the Steelers so repeatedly the Bears finished with nine runs of 10 yards or longer, including four of 18 yards or longer.
Howard, who finished with 138 yards on 23 carries, had two of those on the final two plays of overtime — both on stretch plays. Cohen had 78 yards on 12 carries that included runs of 26 and 36 yards, the latter on the second play of overtime when it appeared he had actually scored on a 73-yard run (he stepped out of bounds at the Steelers 37).
“We kind of slowed ’em down, but we didn’t do what we needed to do, especially in overtime,” inside linebacker Ryan Shazier said.
Slowing the Bears down was a relative term, considering they rushed for 114 yards on 20 attempts before halftime. They kind of set the tone when they ran on six consecutive plays to score their first touchdown after Eli Rogers muffed a punt that the Bears recovered at the Steelers 29.
On their nine-play, 75-yard touchdown drive in the second quarter, the Bears ran five times for 62 yards that included runs of 26 yards by Cohen and 13 yards by Howard.
“If you have over 100 yards rushing on anybody in the first half, you’d have a lot of confidence, too,” Shazier said. “You feel you can do what you want. They felt like we couldn’t stop the run and they kept testing our will to see if we could slow it down. I guess we didn’t do a good enough job.”
The Steelers certainly didn’t in overtime after the Bears won the toss. They ran the same stretch play four consecutive times, and the Steelers looked as if they hadn’t seen the play all day.
Here’s what happened:
On second down, Cohen ran 36 yards off the right side and appeared to score on a 73-yard run to end the game. But the officials ruled he stepped out of bounds at the Steelers 37.
No matter. The Bears came right back with the same play and Howard, who rushed for 138 yards on 23 carries, went 18 yards to the Steelers 19. For good measure, they ran the stretch one more time — shocking, huh? — this time to the right side. And, as he seemingly did the entire game, Howard cut back against the flow and beat the defense to the left pylon for a 19-yard touchdown, putting the Steelers out of their misery.
“If one person doesn’t take care of their gap, then we’re fried,” Heyward said.
Tomlin called the performance against the run “unacceptable.”
“We understand that’s one of their favorite plays and we just had to do a better job of trying to stop it,” Shazier said. “We didn’t do a good enough job.”
Gerry Dulac: gdulac@post-gazette.com and Twitter @gerrydulac.
First Published: September 25, 2017, 2:23 a.m.
