The original “Brian’s Song” movie is a classic. It of course tells the story of Hall of Fame running back Gale Sayers and his friendship with teammate Brian Piccolo, who tragically died of cancer. One line from that movie that stuck out came from Jack Warden who played late owner and then-coach George Halas. It was a simple statement, but one that holds true today. “The best players play.” Apparently Chicago Bears offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains forgot that lesson.
One of the most puzzling situations of the 2017 season is how the Bears have managed the playing time of electric running back Tarik Cohen. He’s undoubtedly one of their biggest playmakers on offense. Yet over the past month he’s seen his snap total diminish considerably.
- ATL: 28/67 (42%)
- TB: 40/64 (62%)
- PIT: 28/65 (43%)
- GB: 18/68 (26%)
- MIN: 17/61 (28%)
- BAL: 26/80 (32%)
- CAR: 7/38 (18%)
- NO: 18/67 (27%)
- GB: 13/60 (22%)
People are having a hard time understanding why that is. Given what he can do with the ball in his hands, one would think the Bears would seek every chance they can to get it to him. Turns out Loggains disagrees. His reasoning for it? Well one would call it a blatant admission of his own weakness as a game planner and play caller.
Dowell Loggains doesn’t trust Cohen and by extension himself
Looking at the chart above the impact of Cohen is easy to see. The Bears are 2-2 in games where he’s played at least 30% of the snaps. They are 1-4 in games where he plays fewer. So again. Why isn’t he on the field more? Loggains danced around the subject for a bit. In the end his excuse was the presence of Cohen on the field made it harder for Mitch Trubisky to read the defenses.
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“Tarik draws as many different looks and different coverages as Mitchell does and people try to dictate and hide coverage to Mitchell. Well, every time Tarik is in the game, you don’t know what you’re going to get. New Orleans had their own separate package for him. Green Bay played him a completely different way than they played the rest of the time.
Sometimes you go in anticipating one thing and when they do something they’ve never done before, now it’s make sure those two young players get on the same page. So sometimes you have to figure out what they’re doing and how they’re trying to dictate the game and they’re playing different personnel groupings to it.”
In other words Loggains took his biggest playmaker off the field because it forced defenses to get more creative. More creative defenses made life a bit harder on Trubisky, who is going to see those advanced schemes the rest of his career. Why try to hide them from him by taking away one of his best weapons?
Long story short is it’s not the wisest move
More than anything this is a blatant admission by Loggains of his own shortcomings. Good offensive coordinators are supposed to challenge defenses, force them to react. They don’t have the ball, so why should they dictate how the next play will go? The Bears offense is better when Cohen is on the field.
In fact he has the second-most yards from scrimmage on the team at 478. He’s only touched the ball 84 times. Jordan Howard, who leads the team at 794? He’s touched it 191 times. So if Bears fans are wondering why the offense is terrible, it’s not because John Fox has somehow curtailed Loggains.
It’s because Loggains himself is terrible.
