The Rams will be in prime time for the second straight week when they host the Chicago Bears on Monday Night Football. It’s the third year in a row these teams have met under the bright lights of prime time, with the teams splitting the last two meetings 1-1.

To find out more about this 5-1 Chicago team, we asked Bears Wire editor Alyssa Barbieri five questions ahead of Monday night’s showdown at SoFi Stadium.

1 Are the struggles with the running game more on David Montgomery or the offensive line?

The Bears run game struggles fall more on the offensive line than Montgomery, and it was evident with how the season started. The offensive line was impressive in run blocking in the first three games this season, where the Bears gained 414 yards on 85 carries for an average 4.9 yards per carry. These last three games have been atrocious, where they went from a top-10 rushing attack to a bottom-six run game. During that span, they’ve gained just 126 yards on 55 carries for an abysmal 2.3 yards per carry.

While they did face stiff competition against the top-two run defenses in two of those weeks, the Bears failed to get any sort of push against those defensive fronts. The loss of left guard James Daniels and subsequent replacement with Rashaad Coward certainly was the biggest reason the Bears struggled to get anything going against the eighth-worst Panthers run defense.

2 Has Nick Foles been playing better than Mitchell Trubisky since taking over at QB?

Not much has changed on the production front for the Bears offense since the Bears turned from Trubisky to Foles. But it’s clear that Foles is the better option to lead this Bears offense, and he’s doing things that Trubisky wasn’t able to do. Foles’ understanding of the offense and his ability to actually read the defense is something that’s been evident since he’s taken over. Foles isn’t going to light up the box score, and he doesn’t need to with this defense. But he can certainly clean some things up, including a boneheaded interception he threw last week.

Not to mention this offense is scoring just 21.3 points per game, which is sixth-worst in the NFL. Foles mentioned winning ugly. But there’s only so long the Bears can get away with that if their offense isn’t pulling their own weight.

3 Is the Bears offensive line capable of slowing down Aaron Donald?

Short answer: No, nope, heck no.

Every offensive line faces a struggle going up against Donald, but he should absolutely feast against a Bears offensive line that is the biggest weakness on this team. It certainly doesn’t help that the Bears are without left guard James Daniels, who suffered a torn pec a couple of weeks ago. Daniels was tasked with stopping Donald over the last two seasons, and he had some success as a rookie back in 2018. Rashaad Coward started in place of Daniels last week, and it was a disaster. He was outmatched and run over by Panthers rookie defensive tackle Derrick Brown. The thought of Daniels matching up against Donald is certainly not a comforting thought in the slightest.

4 What’s been the biggest difference between this season and last year for Chicago?

The biggest difference for the Bears this season has been their defense’s play. That’s not to say that the Bears defense was bad last season, but they had their share of struggles and injuries to key starters certainly didn’t help matters. This Bears defense is playing lights out right now, where despite their offense’s shortcomings they’ve been able to pull out wins. They have a hand in recording a save in all five of their wins. It’s a tad reminiscent of their magical 2018 season, where the defense started to hit their stride around this time. But this Bears team also has been extremely lucky.

They’ve had gifts of dropped touchdown passes and injuries to some star players on opposing teams. They’ve also been an incredibly resilient squad, as evidenced by their three comebacks this season. As Nick Foles said, it’s better to win ugly than lose pretty. And that’s sort of the identity this Bears team has embraced at this point.

5 Who wins on Monday night?

I fully expect this game to be a carbon copy of the last two matchups: a hard-fought, low-scoring battle between two impressive defenses. It’s ultimately going to come down to which offense can do just enough – score just enough points – to pull out a win. Against my better judgement, I’m picking the Bears to eke out a 16-13 win.