As the season approaches its last two weeks, the Atlanta Falcons haven’t exactly made things easy on themselves.
The Falcons are 3-3 in a six-game late-season run that has seen five opponents who were below.500 at the time of the game. This past Sunday, they defeated the Indianapolis Colts, the only team that wasn’t below.500, by a wide margin of 29-10.
Though they will take on another club below.500 in Week 17 on Sunday, things aren’t getting any simpler when they play the Chicago Bears, a team that has performed better than their record indicates in the second half of the season.
At Soldier Field, the Bears (6-9) will play the Falcons (7-8), in what will effectively be another game in which Atlanta’s season is on the line. The Falcons must be focused only on winning out if they are to close the gap with the division-leading Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
One of the last obstacles in coach Arthur Smith and company’s path to an NFC South championship will be stopping a developing offense lead by brilliant quarterback Justin Fields and a hard-charging rushing attack, and he is well aware of this.
“They’ve done a nice job. Their rushing attack is rolling. It’s like last year before we played them, they had had a couple of great weeks running the football. Their designed quarterback runs and the play extension, those add up too. When the game got close yesterday, he scrambled for a big play.”
Smith also sees the exceptional talent on the Bears defense that most casual fans would miss. The fact that Chicago allows the fewest rushing yards per game (80.7) may be problematic for Tyler Allgeier and Bijan Robinson.
“They are playing really well defensively,” Smith remarked. “They’ve invested a lot of money on that defense. They have some younger players in the secondary who are performing admirably. They obviously added Montez Sweat. They’re using a four-man rush effectively to apply pressure. I believe Matt Eberflus is performing admirably.
On Sunday, the Bears and Falcons will tip off at 1 p.m. ET.
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