It's hard to believe, but the franchise of Walter Payton, Gale Sayers, Matt Forte and Neal Anderson can't run the football.

After 54 yards rushing against the Lions and 64 against Buffalo, the Bears are starting to resemble the recent Packers or Saints type of offenses – they have to get yardage through the air or get nothing at all. Mitchell Trubisky has a 101.6 passer rating and the offense has been over 400 yards four times, but the rushing yards are hard to find.

"You’d be shocked, but I really do like to run the football," Nagy said, to a chorus of media laughs and guffaws. "But when you run the ball and it's first-and-10 and you get second-and-9 and then it's first-and-10 and you get second-and-12, that's hard."

Nagy continues to stress the problem doesn't rest with his runners.

Not only has Jordan Howard failed to attain 100 yards this season, he's only had more than 75 yards twice. Howard has 460 yards on 137 efforts. He had 1,313 and 1,122 yards his first two seasons.

When Nagy looked at game film afterward, he could see the backs weren't to blame.

"I didn’t see a lot of yards," he said. "It was tough sledding. Now, that defense that we played, versus the rush game, even though they’re ranked low (30th), their number is they give up explosive plays in the run game. So it’s 1 yard, 2 yards, 3 yards, 1 yard, 2 yards, 3 yards, big play.

"We haven’t been big play in the run game this year. So we were falling into that category of 1 yard, 2 yards, 3 yards and that’s what it was. And so we were having success throwing the ball, so it was easier to throw it."

And Nagy knows it can't continue, especially Sunday night against a Minnesota Vikings defense that has a formidable front seven.

"You can’t go through this thing and be one-dimensional," Nagy said. "It’s just too easy for defenses. We need to, like I said yesterday, we need to improve our run game. As far as how we do that, I’m obviously going to keep that amongst the coaches and our players. But we’re not going to stop until we get it figured out."

The Bears are 12th in rushing, but Mitchell Trubisky's 320 yards accounts for a big chunk of their 1,081 yards. He scored on a quarterback draw against Detroit and is second in the league among quarterbacks at rushing.

The blocking problem could be the result of a lack of continuity in personnel. It has changed frequently.

With starting right guard Kyle Long out, the Bears were alternating between Eric Kush and Bryan Witzmann. And Witzmann, a former Chief who knows the offense, just came to Chicago late in October as a free agent acquisition.

"That was a choice that both (line coach) Harry (Hiestand) and I discussed and we just felt comfortable with him," Nagy said. "It’s again, for Kush and Witz, with Witz being new and coming here, we wanted to give him a good opportunity of seeing what he could do and we thought he did a good job. So we’ll just continue to keep a close eye on that and evaluate that each week."

Kush had been suffering from a neck injury, but shouldn't be bothered much by it at this point.

The other problem with the blocking could stem from not having a viable blocking tight end. Dion Sims has done much of the run blocking at tight end but missed Sunday's game with a concussion. The Bears don't have Adam Shaheen off of injured reserve yet, and at 6-6, 278, he can also have a positive influence as a run blocker.

Ironically, the Bears had trouble passing the ball for decades. Now that they can finally do it, they can't run.

"It's a pretty good (Vikings) defense to say the least of what we're getting ready to go up against," Nagy said. "So our guys have got to be really excited about for that and yeah, understand the details of being good.

"We've just got to do what we do."

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