Bears defense has 'stepped up in a lot of ways'

Left guard Teven Jenkins remains in concussion protocol. Jenkins sustained the injury Dec. 17 in Cleveland and sat out Sunday’s win over the Cardinals.

More will be known about the knee injury that sidelined tight end Cole Kmet for the second half versus Arizona on Wednesday when the Bears return to the practice field and release an injury report.

“We’ll see where that goes in terms of his movement tomorrow,” Eberflus said. 

Before exiting Sunday’s game at halftime, Kmet caught four passes for a career-high 107 yards, including a career-long 53-yard reception from Justin Fields.

“That was a nice play by Justin,” Eberflus said, “evading the rush there, working out of the pocket and then finding Cole all the way down the field, and Cole made an awesome play. Cole played awesome when he was in there. He was gutting it out. Blocking well. He has had a really good season.”

Eberflus acknowledged that ranking 27th in the NFL in passing offense at an average of 182.6 yards per game isn’t good enough.

“If it’s at 27, it’s not where it needs to be,” he said. “We’ve just got to continue to work on that. [We’ve] got to get the downfield, explosive throws. How you score in the NFL is to get explosive passes and explosive runs. That’s what you need to do.

“I felt we did a really good job getting those explosive runs on Sunday. [Khalil] Herbert did a heck of a job running the ball. I thought the line did a really good job of that, but we’ve got to get some of those explosive passes. We had a few, but we need to get more.”

Eberflus also conceded that the Bears must improve another aspect of their offense.

“We have to do a better job with short yardage, there’s no question about that,” he said. “You have to have a staple, something that you go to. It’s usually the sneak or the wedge or the rugby, whatever you’re calling that, the Philadelphia play. We’ve done that a couple times, but we need to be more effective at that because you need something like that where you can always go to that, and then you need some stuff that hits the perimeter because teams will load up inside there on you, pack everybody inside and leave themselves vulnerable on the outside.

“We certainly have that in our arsenal too. But it just comes down to execution. It comes down to the guys executing the push play better and also the perimeter plays better.”