Bear & Balanced: Bears Bully the Eagles Behind a Beautiful Run Game

It wasn’t quite as dominant as Clubber Lang knocking out Rocky Balboa, but the Chicago Bears did the unthinkable. They went into Philly, and they smacked the Philadelphia Eagles around for the entire world to see.

At one point in the game, the broadcast team described the Bears’ dominant run game as delivering body blows to the Eagles. Chicago’s 281 rushing yards were the most the Eagles have allowed since 2015. This was the first time that Philadelphia had allowed a hundred-yard rusher in 34 games, and the first time they had allowed two hundred-yard rushers in the same game in twenty years.

Chicago’s offensive line deserves all the credit, but so do the tight ends and receivers, and I can’t express enough how beautiful the running scheme cooked up by Ben Johnson and the coaching staff is.

If one year, the Bears went from firing their head coach following an embarrassment of a game on a nationally televised Thanksgiving contest, to knocking off the Super Bowl champs on a nationally televised Black Friday game, with the new head coach ripping his shirt off during the postgame speech.

This is a great time to be a Bears fan.

Check out JB and me on our latest show right here (or on YouTube) live at 11:00 a.m. CT as we talk through the greatest game in the history of Bear & Balanced.

Podcast version right here:

Here’s our usual bullet point outline of Bear & Balanced.

• Intro: We’ll both share some general thoughts about the game.
• Trench Tribute: This is our weekly pick for the best Bears lineman.
• Caught up in a numbers game: This segment features one number or statistic from the game that we found interesting.
• Sweet Tweets: We’re both active on social media — so be sure you’re all following us at @gridironborn & @wiltfongjr — and we highlight one Twitter interaction/Tweet each week. We’re both also on the Bluesky here and here.
• The Caleb Corner: We talk about quarterback Caleb Williams before we take our commercial break.
• The 3 Bears: You all know the story of the Three Bears, don’t you? In this porridge-themed portion of the show, we give our picks for the Bear that was hot, the Bear that was cold, and the Bear that was just right in the game against the Eagles.

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