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USA Today Sports Media Group
USA Today Sports Media Group
Sport
Alyssa Barbieri

Bears’ porous run defense is huge concern through two weeks

The Chicago Bears suffered another frustrating 27-10 loss to the Green Bay Packers, where the run defense was once again problematic.

After allowing 176 yards on the ground to the San Francisco 49ers in Week 1, the Bears allowed 203 rushing yards to the Packers in a losing effort, where they had no answer for running back Aaron Jones.

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Last week, Chicago was bailed out when 49ers starting running back Elijah Mitchell went down with an injury. They didn’t have that luxury against the Packers.

Jones ran for 132 yards on 15 carries (averaging 8.8 yards per carry) and one touchdown. While AJ Dillon didn’t have as dominant an effort as Jones, he had a solid 61 yards on 18 carries (3.4 average). Still, missed tackles were a huge issue for the Bears.

“We’ve got to tackle better,” said safety Eddie Jackson, via ChicagoBears.com. “We’ve got to get the ball out, got to be on top of our keys, myself included. There were a lot of plays we left out there.”

There were concerns across the board on defense, including in the secondary where rookie Kyler Gordon was picked on early and often. But the run defense remains a huge concern through these first two weeks of the season.

Chicago has given up 379 yards on the ground through two weeks, and it’s concerning considering there are some good running backs on deck in the coming weeks.

“We’ll definitely hear about it, and we should,” said linebacker Nicholas Morrow. “I don’t know how many yards they had rushing, but they had way too many and they had way too many last week. It’s hard to win games when you let teams run the ball on you.”

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