Bear Down, Nerd Up: Robert Quinn is half a sack from Bears history

No two NFL games are ever the same, and Sunday’s 25-24 Bears victory was no exception.

There was the snow, there was Nick Foles’ heroics, there was the decision to go for two points to win the game. It was a fun football game and it gave Bears fans something to enjoy for a few hours on a holiday weekend.

Here are the stats, numbers and figures that stood out this week.

Sack machine: With another sack on Sunday, Robert Quinn raised his season total to 17. He tied Richard Dent with the second-highest single-season sack total by a Bears player ever (Dent had 17 in 1985). He is half a sack behind Dent’s team record of 17.5 set in 1984.

“Richard Dent is a household name around here,” Quinn said Sunday. “To even be in that same conversation, it’s an honor.”

Quinn is now half a sack behind Pittsburgh’s T.J. Watt for the NFL lead. Watt has 17.5 sacks.

A Bears player has not led the NFL in sacks since Dent’s 1985 season. Quinn has a realistic chance to do it if he can put together two more good games.

According to Pro Football Reference, Dent is the only Bears player to lead the NFL in sacks dating back to 1960, including unofficial sack totals (sacks weren’t a stat until 1982).

The Bears end the season with the New York Giants this week at Soldier Field and a trip to Minnesota a week later. Quinn has three sacks against Kirk Cousins since joining the Bears, including two on Monday Night Football on Dec. 20.

The veteran pass rusher is also half a sack shy of reaching 100 sacks for his career. He is two sacks shy of his career high 19.

Remember, this is a guy who had two (two!) sacks last year.

“Luckily I had the backing of the guys in the locker room, so it made this year a little bit easier,” Quinn said.

Quinn’s one sack Sunday might have saved the game for the Bears. He sacked Russell Wilson in the fourth quarter and pushed the Seahawks backwards 13 yards. It forced Seattle kicker Jason Myers to attempt a much longer kick at 39 yards, which he missed wide left. That kept it a seven-point game and gave the Bears offense a chance to win the game.

Chances of winning: Win probabilities are just that – the probability a team will win faced with a certain situation. They largely ignore the human element and they don’t mean a whole lot after the game.

That doesn’t mean they’re not fun to look at.

The Seahawks had a 96% win probability, according to ESPN, when they had the ball in Bears territory up by seven points with just over four minutes to play. That was moments before a holding penalty sent them backwards and out of field goal range.

They also had a 93.3% chance to win the game when the Bears faced a third-and-14 with 1:07 remaining. Jimmy Graham caught the key touchdown pass from Foles on the next play, completely upending that win probability.

Tough catch: Foles’ touchdown pass to Graham is now the 13th most improbable completion in the NFL this season, according to NFL Next Gen Stats. That pass had just a 14.7% chance of being completed. Graham had two defenders draped all over him and had to go up and grab the ball over both of them.

It just edged out Justin Fields’ touchdown pass to Jesper Horsted a week earlier, which had a 14.9% chance of completion on the final play of the game against Minnesota.

Passing improvement: After starting the season with an extreme lack of production from the passing game, the Bears have thrown for 200 yards or more in seven consecutive games.

They failed to throw for 200 yards in any of their first eight games this season.

The team totaled 229 net passing yards against the Seahawks. Foles threw for 250 yards and was sacked four times for a loss of 21 yards.

Through the first eight games of the season, the Bears averaged 127.4 passing yards per game. Over the next seven games, they have averaged 251.4 passing yards per game. That improvement probably has something to do with the maturation of their rookie quarterback, plus three starts from veterans Andy Dalton and Foles during that span.

They still sport the last-ranked passing game in the NFL over the course of the full season (185.3 passing yards per game through 15 games), and they have totaled 300 passing yards just once (during the Thanksgiving Day win over Detroit).

Running Rashaad: The Bears defense allowed the Seahawks to run for 170 rushing yards. That’s the third-most the Bears have allowed this season.

Per Next Gen Stats, Seahawks running back Rashaad Penny rushed for 61 yards over expected. He leads the NFL in yards over expected over the past three weeks with 122.

He had three runs of 25 yards or more on Sunday.

Dazzling Dazz: Bears receiver Dazz Newsome touched 20.27 miles per hour on his 28-yard punt return in the first half. That speed was a top 10 fastest run by a ball carrier in Week 16, according to Next Gen Stats.

Newsome also made his first career catch on Sunday. It went for 10 yards and a first down.