Bye week change by Bears nets rest but surrenders practice time

"I want to say this is the earliest bye week I've ever had," veteran safety Kevin Byard pointed out.
"Normally, coaches have done it different ways. Normally when it's late in the year, bye week, sometimes you get the whole week off. By it being so early, we still have to continue to get better as a team."

There's little doubt the need for improvment as the running game and run defense  have struggled greatly, but now they won't be back until they begin preparing for a rematch of the "Fail Mary" game with Washington.

It's not exactly a break for a team to have the bye week so early because the best thing a bye does is let them heal from injuries.

The Bears do have injuries now to recover from, but many of those are nearly finished being problems. Kyler Gordon's hamstring issue, as well as T.J. Edwards' hamstring, should be reaching a point where they're not an issue even without the bye week.

Later in the season, they could have more injuries and they won't have the benefit of a week off for everyone to heal.

Then again, later in the season they're hoping to be building momentum as a team that is starting to hit its stride after putting all of the pieces into place earlier this year. So they may want to be playing more later, anyway.

“I've said all along this is a good thing for us," coach Ben Johnson said. "We're going to be in good shape. You look at it where we're at injury wise too, I think it's going to be a good opportunity for a few guys to get healthy again and get some reinforcements back. You look at it from that aspect, you don't know that going into the season, but I think it's going to time up well."

For Johnson, this is also a point where coaches can make decisions. Maybe they'll decide something about the tackle position or perhaps Ryan Poles engineers a trade to help the pass rush or run defense.

"Then for us as a staff I think we'll have a good feel after four games of who we are, what we do well, and what we (coaches) can sink our teeth into–whether we want to pivot a little bit in certain spots, whether that's personnel-driven or schematic that can get us better going ahead," Johnson said.

The Bears can use help at several spots. Perhaps they solve issues by  simply getting healthier.

What's obvious is they've been exposed in several areas and if they want to  extend their current winning streak to three then they'll need to avoid more trouble running, stopping the run and getting to the quarterback.

It seems more like a problem they need to solve with more practice and not less, but this is the bye week and they've chosen how they'll handle this break.