NFL Network’s Kurt Warner: What the Bears Exposed about the Seahawks

A week after Seattle exposed Kansas City, Rich wanted to know if Chicago had just done the same thing to Seattle. Kurt Warner, who called the game, said the answer starts and ends in the trenches.

"We get so caught up with the shiny pieces on the outside and the quarterback play," the NFL Network analyst told Rich. He understands why, since it's a quarterback-driven league. "But you still notice week in and week out, the teams that win the line of scrimmage are the teams that win and dominate football games."

Warner said very few teams don't have some weakness you can attack, if you have the players to do it. And both of these teams win the same way. When Chicago has won this year, it has dominated the line of scrimmage. When Seattle has won, it has dominated up front too, especially on defense.

"And Chicago dominated them up front," Warner said.

He laid out the evidence. Seattle had trouble getting pressure on Caleb Williams. Every handoff went for "4-5 yards at a chunk." The Seahawks couldn't create negative plays or quick pressure. "That was the story of that game."

The reason it mattered so much, Warner explained, is how Seattle's defense is built. It usually plays zone coverage and rushes four, rather than throwing an abundance of blitzes. "And they could not get home in this game against Chicago, and that was the determining factor."

Warner also offered a perspective only someone in the building had. The score got somewhat close at one point, but "calling the game and being there in person, I never felt like Seattle was in this game. I felt like Chicago dominated them from start to finish."

So did the Bears write a blueprint? Warner thinks they exposed something real. If you want to sit in zone coverage with a great secondary and you can't get pressure, an offense can figure it out, complete passes and move the ball. The open question is who else can actually do it. "How many teams are going to be able to dominate that front four of Seattle? I don't know," Warner said. "There's probably not very many."

He also credited Ben Johnson for some smart tweaks. Johnson half-rolled Williams at times, including once off a wildcat look where the ball was flipped back to him. Moving the launch point "changes the rush lanes for a defensive line," Warner said, forcing rushers to play laterally and slowing them down.

Rich chimed in on the newest piece. "Simmons, what an addition already," he said, adding that Williams just sat back and picked Seattle apart.

Next up for Chicago is Tampa, and Rich expected the Bucs to blitz Williams "coming off the bus." Is that how you slow him down?

Warner said that's the next test he would throw at Williams. He'd expected the Seattle game to put more on Williams in the pocket, reading coverage and getting the ball out on time, but it didn't play out that way. So the logical move for an opponent is to blitz him, keep him in the pocket and make him get rid of it.

But Warner added a big caveat. "It's much easier said than done," he said. If you throw all-out blitzes and get gashed in the run game, you're giving up big plays just to try to rattle Williams.

That's because of who the Bears really are. "As great as Caleb has played, the bottom line with this team is they're a run-first team," Warner said. Chicago wants to win on the ground and let Williams come along as a complementary piece.

The answer, Warner said, is the same one teams apply to any great offense: make it one-dimensional. He compared it to the approach with Kansas City, stopping the run and forcing the game into Patrick Mahomes' hands. With Chicago, you have to stop the run first, then make Williams beat the blitz.

"It just hasn't been easy for teams to do that," Warner said, "with how the Chicago Bears team is built."