D'Andre Swift owes his recent resurgence to a bold change of plans

Things went wrong in many ways for D'Andre Swift and the Chicago Bears' rushing attack. He was miserable in the first three games, averaging just 1.84 yards per carry. People were already calling Swift a terribly overpriced purchase. He may have been nothing more than a product of Philadelphia's great offensive line, which racked up 1,000 yards last season. Something had to change if the Bears wanted to save their investment. This was ultimately due to offensive coordinator Shane Waldron tweaking their running plan.

Chicago relied on a mix of outside zone, I-formation and zone-read in the first three games. It didn't take long to become clear that the offensive line was having trouble blocking this. The opponents showed aggressive looks to crowd the battle line and blow it up. As a result, Waldron moved to what is known as a “split zone.” Here the five linemen would focus on blocking three defensive linemen and the linebackers, while the tight end would push across the formation to hit the free defensive end.

The idea is to split blocking responsibility and create a cutback lane for the running back, potentially allowing big gains against defenses that play too hard on one side of the line.