Ben Johnson: Bears run game has ‘dipped a little bit’

The Bears’ run game isn’t what it used to be.

“It feels like it’s dipped a little bit,” coach Ben Johnson said Wednesday. “Not something that we certainly want. Certainly, late in the season, we wanted that to pick up.”

The Bears ran for 65 yards in their regular season finale loss to the Lions, the fewest of any game they played all season. They ran for 93 in the playoff win against the rival Packers, which would have been their fourth-worst game of the regular season.

The Bears can’t afford to do that again on a frigid Sunday night against the Rams.

“Playoffs, weather games like this, you certainly want to be able to lean on your run game … ” Johnson said. “What can we do to help ignite that? It’s both efficient runs to stay on track and ahead of the chains, and also explosive runs as well. Where can we find a few of those?”

Running back D’Andre Swift suspects that some of the Packers’ stinginess Saturday was a function of playing the Bears three times in six weeks. The Bears won’t be as familiar to the Rams — they last played in Week 4 last year.

“it was good that we got the win [Saturday], so we can correct those things this week and get back on track,” Swift said.

The Rams won’t make it easy. They held the Panthers to 83 yards on 3.8 carries in their Round 1 playoff win. That would have been their sixth-worst showing of the season.

“These guys at the line of scrimmage are really good football players,” Johnson said. “I think they shed blocks at an elite level. I think they are relentless. I think they’re violent really across the board. So I have a lot of respect for them, and we’re gonna have to be on our ‘A’ game to be able to run it on this crew.’”