Peppers Looks to Contain “Beast Mode”

The Seahawks earned a shot at the Bears with a win over the Saints that was sealed with a 67-yard touchdown run by Marshawn Lynch.

In what will be on every highlight reel of the 2011 playoffs, Lynch broke roughly 1,482 tackles on his way to the end zone. The entire offense, including quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, had a hand in blocking, and the Saints looked like a bewildered peewee football team on their first day of practice.

Julius Peppers watched the touchdown run, and doesn't expect to see the Bears make the same mistakes.

“He ran really hard on that, but I saw a few guys on that play miss tackles and then get up and start watching him. That doesn’t happen around here. We get up and run to the ball. Somebody is going to get him down.”

The run could have been stopped if any of the Saints that got a hand on Lynch had better technique. It started at the line of scrimmage, when Scott Shanle tried to stop Lynch with an arm tackle. Cornerback Jabari Greer had two shots at Lynch, but slid off of him on both attempts. Lynch threw Tracy Porter to the side like a sack of potatoes. Former Bear and lineman Alex Brown ran Lynch down, but was too slow to tackle him from behind.

Peppers is right. That sort of run is unlikely to happen to Chicago. The Bears have the second-best running defense in the NFL, giving up just 90.1 yards on the ground per game. In the last three games of the season, the longest run was for 21 yards by Minnesota's Toby Gerhart. Against the Packers, the Bears didn't give up a single run that hit double digits.

Sorry, Marshawn. Soldier Field won't be so welcoming to Beast Mode.