- REWATCH: Bears-Eagles on NFL+ Premium
Nick Shook's takeaways:
- Bears' ground game steamrolls path to victory. On a frigid, windy Black Friday in Philadelphia, Chicago needed to lean on its rushing attack to gain an advantage. The Bears instead found a trump card. Thanks in part to an offensive line that cleared alleys for them, bruising back Kyle Monangai and D'Andre Swift racked up 255 yards and two rushing scores on 40 carries, helping pace Chicago's offense, take some responsibility off Caleb Williams' shoulders amid inclement weather and dominate time of possession nearly 2:1. The Bears' rushing success wasn't an anomaly on Friday, but a feature: Over their previous four games, Chicago averaged 205.8 rushing yards per contest as a team. The Bears exceeded that mark emphatically, posting a team total of 281 yards against a highly respected opponent. Chicago earned its own serving of appreciation Friday.
- Eagles' offense continues miserable trudge. Philadelphia's disjointed offense produced a performance that typified everything good and bad about it through 13 weeks. The Eagles converted just 4 of 12 third down attempts, went three-and-out four times, lacked creativity and, perhaps even worse, struggled mightily with executing simple tasks. Jalen Hurts was inconsistent in the accuracy department, throwing passes behind receivers rather routinely, and their ground game was subpar again. The Eagles' offensive line injuries are undoubtedly hurting their rushing offense, but it's also equally as frustrating to witness how quickly they can move down the field when operating with a sense of urgency and leaning on their best players. For all of the drama that has revolved around A.J. Brown, he played a pivotal role on Friday, catching 10 of his 12 targets for 132 yards and two touchdowns. And yet, in some key spots, it seemed as if Hurts preferred to survey rather than feed his best pass-catcher. Philadelphia's fans booed the unit aggressively entering halftime, and rightfully so. Even when they found life in the fourth quarter, the Eagles fumbled away possession on a tush push. Such is life for the Birds in 2025.
- Chicago's opportunistic defense is peaking. The Bears have hung their hat on takeaways in 2025, entering Friday as the league leader with 24, a number that makes additional takeaways almost feel inevitable. Nahshon Wright continued his hot stretch of play by earning another one in the second half, shaking off the touchdown he surrendered to Brown and flying into the tush push pile on fourth-and-1 to strip the ball from Hurts' grasp for a crucial turnover that stopped the Eagles' offense (and their growing momentum) in its tracks. The Bears' strength lies in their secondary, a unit that made everything difficult for the Eagles and their beleaguered passing game, and while most of the praise will be directed toward Ben Johnson's offense, this defense showed once again why it's time the NFL takes the Bears seriously.
- Jake Elliott's inconsistency inspires two-point debate. There are different schools of thought regarding these decisions in the fourth quarter, but it's noteworthy because it's going to dominate the postmortem in Philadelphia on Saturday morning. After capping a methodical drive with a touchdown to cut the fourth-quarter deficit to nine points, Eagles coach Nick Sirianni opted to go for two, a conversion attempt that failed and eliminated any remaining hope of a comeback with 3:10 left to play. One side of this argument supports such a decision by suggesting it's an effective source of additional information (e.g., how many possessions a team will need in the remaining time). But with 190 seconds left to mount the comeback, multiple possessions are unlikely for the trailing team, increasing the value of kicking the extra point to make it an eight-point game and thus, a one-possession difference. There was a problem with that on Friday, though: Kicker Jake Elliott proved he couldn't be trusted. Elliott missed a PAT that would have tied the game at 10-10 midway through the third quarter, perhaps prompting Sirianni to go for two while trailing by nine because he couldn't count on his kicker to convert on a windy night. The debate will rage on (I'm always in favor of minimizing the total possessions needed to tie), but the fashion in which the game officially ended -- Elliott missed a desperate 52-yarder with 13 seconds left -- poetically captured the frustrating nature of these Eagles, which extended beyond the offense Friday.
- Bears finally notch a quality win. Chicago and New England, the NFL's two heartwarming turnaround stories in 2025, share a common characteristic when critiqued: Who have they played? The Patriots own a couple of quality wins but until Friday, the Bears couldn't make the same claim. Consider that point moot, at least for one more week. The Bears rolled into the home of the defending Super Bowl champions and proved they were the better team, winning a first-half rock fight by beating up on the Eagles in the trenches and slamming the door on Philadelphia with some appropriately aggressive and creative play-calling in key spots. Late in the fourth quarter, Johnson dialed up a play-action bootleg to the left, building off the highly successful running game. As Williams rolled away from his throwing arm and the play flowed in the same direction, it appeared destined for a short completion to keep the clock moving. Instead, Williams kept his eyes downfield and found tight end Cole Kmet, who outran safety Reed Blankenship toward the end zone. Williams' perfect throw -- a pass delivered with a relatively high degree of difficulty -- cleared Blankenship and landed in Kmet's grasp for the game-sealing score, sending Eagles fans to the exit and representing a level of trust between coach and quarterback unseen in Chicago since the days of Jay Cutler and Lovie Smith. It's OK to get excited, Bears fans: You have a quarterback, a darn good football coach and hungry, fearless team. The rest of the league discovered that Friday.
Next Gen Stats insight from Bears-Eagles (via NFL Pro): Across 42 designed carries, the Bears recorded 91 yards before contact and 177 yards after contact, both of which were their season highs. Their ball carriers forced nine missed tackles combined, tied for their season-most on such runs, with D’Andre Swift forcing five and Kyle Monangai four.
NFL Research: D’Andre Swift and Kyle Monangai became the first Bears teammates with 100-plus rushing yards each in a game since Walter Payton and Matt Suhey in Week 10 of the 1985 season. Swift and Monangai also became the first Bears running back duo to record 120-plus rushing yards each in a game in franchise history.
