The Bears have seen a massive changeover in offensive personnel this offseason. QB Justin Fields, RB D’Onta Foreman, WR Darnell Mooney, WR Equanimeous St. Brown, TE Robert Tonyan, IOL Cody Whitehair, and IOL Lucas Patrick, who combined to account for over 4100 offensive snaps in 2023, are no longer on the roster.

The Bears have replaced those players with QB Caleb Williams, RB D’Andre Swift, WR Keenan Allen, WR Rome Odunze, TE Gerald Everett, IOL Ryan Bates, and IOL Coleman Shelton. It’s safe to say these players are a significant net upgrade, and the Bears invested heavily (draft picks 1, 9, and 144 and $45M in salary cap spending on the veterans) to make sure that would be the case.

In addition to changing over the players, the Bears brought in a new offensive coaching staff, and offensive coordinator Shane Waldron will be tasked with turning this talent into a cohesive and effective unit. Since Waldron spent three years as the play caller in Seattle, this week I want to dig into his data to see what we can learn that might translate to Chicago. I am going to focus mostly on what his play calling tendencies were and less on how effective the offense was, because effectiveness will depend significantly on personnel and will be entirely different in Chicago.

We’ll start today by looking at Waldron’s down and distance trends, and will examine personnel groupings tomorrow.

1st down

Let’s start with examining what Waldron liked to do on 1st down. The table below shows how often Seattle called a passing play vs. a running play, how many of their passes went deep down the field (15+ yards past the line of scrimmage in the air), and how many of their runs were inside the tackles. A few quick notes:

• To remove game situation as much as possible, I only looked at plays between the 20s in the first three quarters. This is a look at what Waldron liked to do in fairly neutral situations. These same criteria will apply to all data in this article.
• I looked at Seattle for 2021, 2022, and 2023 so we could see what trends were consistent from year to year and what ones changed. This might give hints as to what Waldron will likely keep vs. what might shift depending on personnel.
• I also showed what Chicago looked like in 2023, so we can get a general idea of how things might change compared to what we saw last year.
• To put all these numbers in context, I provided the high, average, and low values for all 32 NFL teams in 2023, and where the 2023 Bears and Seahawks ranked in each category. Values in the top 25% are highlighted in green, while those in the bottom 25% are highlighted in red.
• All data comes from Pro Football Reference’s game play finder.

A few thoughts:

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I don’t know what the Jerry Angelo “project” was; his tenure was marred by a pernicious reluctance to add top receiver talent and ultimately doomed by Caleb Hanie’s inability to play the quarterback position at a high school level.

I don’t know what the Phil Emery “project” was; his tenure never got out of the starting gate, as hiring Marc Trestman (and not Bruce Arians) derailed any potential success for the organization on his watch.

I think I know what the Ryan Pace “project” was, but he learned the single most important lesson for an NFL GM: if you get the quarterback wrong your chance at success is minimal. (And he technically got it wrong twice.)

The Ryan Poles Project may sound like the name of a 70s prog rock band, but it is actually the most coherently executed management plan the Chicago Bears have displayed in forty years. It’s had a clear, definable trajectory since George McCaskey met Poles at that Blackhawks Bar in O’Hare (or something). But its legibility took form even before that meeting.

When the Bears were interviewing general manager candidates to replace Pace, no candidate was more honest than Poles. He looked George and Ted in the eyes and told them, in no uncertain terms, that the roster was crap. He told them he would have to burn the entire thing to the ground, collapse it like one of those Vegas casinos that can no longer survive an endless series of minor renovations. He told them what he envisioned was not a quick fix, but instead a multi-year project that would end with the Bears being consistent contenders. He needed them to commit to that vision, that project. And they did.

Flus brought in.

But say goodbye

to Khalil, Bob Quinn

and some Roquan guy.

Loss after loss,

Fans head for the hills.

But hold up, hoss.

It’s Davis Mills!

Like healing a leper,

They’ve got the first pick.

And here comes Dave Tepper,

the des-per-ate prick.

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Following Kevin Warren and the Bears releasing renderings of a new Chicago lakefront stadium last week, Governer Pritzker’s office responded with a statement yesterday that called the Bears’ proposal a “non starter for the state”. Full quote in the tweet below:

Not shocking to see Gov. Pritzker’s office call the Bears’ current stadium proposal a “non starter for the state.”

Secretary Alex Gough to @nbcchicago.

"In order to subsidize a brand new stadium for a privately owned sports team, the Governor would need to see a demonstrable… https://t.co/53Mul9S4Z1

— Josh Schrock (@Schrock_And_Awe) May 1, 2024

How will the Bears’ stadium project proceed? What are they going to do with their purchased Arlington Heights lot? We’ll have to wait and see.

Your Turn: What do you think about the Bears’ Stadium debacle?

This quote from a 670 The Score interview with Will Hewlett struck me yesterday — seems as if the Bears used the assurance that came from the #1 overall pick to give Chicago’s signal-caller a head start compared to most rookies.

Will Hewlett has "pieces" of the Bears' plays, Shane Waldron's "terminology" and the "basic route concepts in terms of depth and timing" of the Bears as he has been training Caleb Williams for the past 6 weeks.

— 670 The Score (@670TheScore) April 30, 2024

Given that he’ll need to be a leader in offensive meetings as soon as possible, I love hearing that the Bears are doing everything they can to help him hit the ground running. That extra time with the offense’s basics should make initial installs that much more effective.

Also, early reports from Bears’ throwing sessions are that Caleb Williams is throwing with anticipation during early work with his receivers. DJ Moore expands below:

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Nick and I discussed the Bears’ draft in-depth on our latest episode of Bear With Us — I’ll have a fresh set of comprehensive draft grades done by the end of the week, but if you’re looking for analysis in the meantime feel free to check this out!

Your Turn: What did you think of the 2024 Draft Class?

Quick Disclaimer: I hate Draft Grades.

These flimsy ‘grades’ are built far too quickly and rely entirely on the grader’s (my) priors, ultimately boiling down to questions like these:

• Did I like the players Ryan Poles drafted before we entered draft week?
• Do I agree with Poles’ teambuilding philosophy or do I want to hold it against him?
• Do I think Poles ‘over-drafted’ any of the players he selected? Or did he ‘steal’ a few of his players instead?

These questions leave far too much room for subjectivity and ask the grader to make too many judgement calls, often resulting in guesses and good vibes that include some context while leaving out others. Take for instance the grades handed out to Ryan Pace’s 2019 Draft, arguably the worst Bears draft in recent memory — would it surprise you that a draft without a 1st or 2nd round pick still received multiple ‘A’s and quite a few ‘B’s? What does any of that mean?

Maybe it’s my engineering background, but I want to measure Ryan Poles’ latest draft against something a bit more firm — I want to assess the ‘value’ he got out of the 2024 draft, and I believe that requires a new set of questions to measure Poles against:

• Do Ryan Poles’ 2024 selections make sense within the Bears’ current contention timeframe?
• Which positions did Ryan Poles target? How difficult is replacing/upgrading each selection’s position outside of the draft?
• Does each chosen player fill a role within Chicago’s big picture? If so, how important is that role?
• How much success does each chosen player need to achieve to justify their selection?
• Finally, what do I think of the player?

With our criteria set, I think we can properly assess Poles’ 2024 Draft Class. Let’s dive right in with…

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And apparently, they’re ready to get to work.

https://twitter.com/ChicagoBears/status/1783680998951072208

Catch up on our live reaction to the picks from last night’s stream here:

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Happy Draft Day everybody!

Come watch the draft with the DBB gang tonight! Show starts at 6:30PM CST!

Let me be honest with you — I haven’t allowed myself to think about Ryan Poles drafting any of the ‘Big 3’ Wide Receivers (Marvin Harrison Jr, Malik Nabers, and Rome Odunze) for two reasons:

1. It’s seemed more and more likely over time that all three of those WRs will be drafted by #8 (with Atlanta trading out of their pick and allowing a WR-needy team to jump Chicago)
2. If one of those WRs did fall to 9, it’s seemed like an obvious Ryan Poles move to subsequently dangle that 3rd WR as a trade chip for the WR-needy team described in Atlanta’s deal above, giving Ryan Poles a few more picks in the 2024 draft.

This logic made sense to me for a long time. But a few things happened yesterday that have me wondering if Ryan Poles has an explosive move planned for mid-Thursday night.

First off, when asked about whether Ryan Poles felt any need to add picks in this draft he had this to say:

Ryan Poles on whether he feels the need to add more than the Bears' four selections: "No, I feel really good with where we're at."

— Chris Emma (@CEmma670) April 23, 2024

Is that gamesmanship? Could be, but Ryan Poles has a habit of being unusually honest with the media in open sessions. I’ll never forget standing at Poles’ presser at the 2023 NFL Scouting Combine where he all but told the media that he wanted to trade #1 overall before the start of Free Agency. Within days, the pick had been dealt.

But Poles (potentially) sticking at #9 doesn’t automatically signal interest in Odunze being the pick. The Bears could easily stick at #9 and take any of the popular pass-rushers on the board — names like Byron Murphy, Jared Verse, Dallas Turner come to mind.

But search presumed #1 Overall Pick Caleb Williams’ social media, and you’ll find a budding relationship blooming with he and Rome Odunze — is this a smoke screen? Or a smoke signal? You tell me.

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Kevin Costner’s ‘Draft Day’ is the best bad football movie available. The movie barely understands its own subject matter, botching everything from draft value to basic football terminology to travel times from New York City to Cleveland, but it’s the only draft-related movie we have and that makes it awesome by default.

I make it a point to watch Draft Day once a year right around now. This year, feel free to join me.

Your Turn: Have you ever seen ‘Draft Day’? What do you think of the film?