I don’t know about you, but I loathe uncertainty.

Will Justin Fields take the next step this year?

Can any of the Bears’ young DL step forward and save their pass rush?

Chicago will finally beat the Packers on Week 1, right?

Questions like this eat at me whenever I think about the 2023 season, and for good reason — each question’s answer is a massive domino that could swing Chicago’s year.

But as excited as I am that the Bears are back in pads today at Halas Hall, I want to caution everyone from drawing any hard conclusions from these football practices — after all, Training Camp isn’t the indicator we tend to want to make it, for better and for worse.

Us fans, so starved for football after 7 long months of offseason, want to take every video clip and use it as proof of QB progress, the skill of a rookie WR, or even the efficacy of a Defensive Back, but in reality these football practices are so full of chaotic experimentation, new installs of offensive/defensive terminology, coaches pushing boundaries, and rapid chemistry-building on both sides of the ball that mistakes become common (even intended) and lead to sloppy practices like the Bears had just yesterday.

To some, Fields throwing multiple INTs in a practice may seem like cause for alarm. On that note, take a look at early reports from the 2021 Cincinnati Bengals’ first day in pads and see what beat reporters had to say about the soon-to-be AFC Champions:

woooooof https://t.co/uhLNcoVAWy pic.twitter.com/ZPyjftScBk

— charles (“you look good” – andy reid) mcdonald (@FourVerts) August 4, 2021

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Happy Monday everyone! Get set for another week of Bears’ camp with extensive Saturday notes written by our own Johnathan Wood here:

Our first episode of Dissecting a Drive covered a drive so early in the year that the Bears offense (& Justin Fields’ play within it) felt juvenile compared to where they finished the 2022 season — so much changed schematically after their win over the Patriots that to claim that Chicago’s 2023 offense will look anything like it did early in 2022 feels foolish.

With that in mind, I charted the evolution of Chicago’s offense by taking a look at the Bears’ 9-play opening drive against Buffalo late in the year to continue prepping for what Luke Getsy may do with the 2023 Bears — in this drive, we see:

• How the threat of Justin Fields’ legs dictated Sean McDermott’s initial defensive calls
• The space Luke Getsy was able to open up by using those adjustments against Buffalo
• How Luke Getsy used Fields to gain blocking advantages in the running game
• A few nice examples of the Bears’ comprehensive Boot rolodex
• And much, much more

Check it out and let me know what you think!

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I had the chance to attend Bears practice today, and wanted to share a few observations.

Before we go too far, here’s your obligatory reminder not to read too much into one unpadded practice in the early days of training camp. None of these observations are meant to be absolutes about what is going to happen this season.

With that out of the way, let’s get down to it.

Offense

• I’ll start with Justin Fields, who is far and away the most interesting Bear this year. I spent more time watching him than I should have, and thought it was a mixed bag overall.
  • First the good: Fields was totally in control during team drills. The 1st string offense seemed to dominate their red zone 11 on 11 session (though I didn’t have a great view of it), and they were 2 for 2 in two minute drills to end practice, including consistently getting the ball snapped with about 30 seconds left on the clock when . I especially loved seeing Fields rip a quick slant to Claypool right at the top of his drop to pick up an easy 15 yards. He needs to really improve in the quick game this year, so that play – while not a huge highlight – was my favorite of the day.
  • Now the bad: in all of the QB drills where they were throwing the ball into nets with no defenders present, Fields kept doing a double or triple clutch before letting the ball fly. That’s an issue in the quick game, and I’d like to see him just get the ball out quicker in those situations to practice what it should look like in a game. His accuracy on short passes was also not super consistent, which has also been an issue through his first 2 NFL seasons.
• One other QB I was interested in seeing was undrafted rookie Tyson Bagent, who is making the jump to the NFL out of division 2 Shepherd. The ball has a really nice spin coming out of his hands, and his accuracy on short and medium passes was quite solid, but his lack of arm strength really showed up on anything deep. He also looked really skinny next to the other QBs, so if he sticks around on the practice squad this year, he’ll need to spend some serious time in the weight room and improve his arm strength to have any chance at making it in the NFL.
• The Bears did a lot of red-zone work, and Robert Tonyan kept showing up everywhere. He was on the field with the 1st and 2nd string offenses, and was probably their most targeted player. I’m not sure if that was just a product of the day or a sign that they want to feature him as a red zone weapon.
  • The red zone sessions also featured a ton of motion, which was great to see. It’s something that provides the offense with an advantage, and it’s something that the Bears didn’t use much of last year, but almost every play in 11-on-11 and 7-on-7 featured somebody motioning before the snap.
  • They also had a lot of designed QB runs in the red zone session, and not just with Justin Fields. PJ walker and the 2nd string offense had a good number of them too. I expect that will be a real part of their red zone offense this season.

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While it isn’t the dire situation we saw a year ago, the Chicago Bears have entered training camp with questions along their offensive line.

The Bears made two big investments in their offensive line, signing guard Nate Davis and drafting tackle Darnell Wright, but it’s still worth questioning if that is enough. The Bears will be relying on three unproven players as well as two veterans who need to step forward in 2023, and for this offensive line to compete against the best defensive lines on their schedule they’ll need quite a bit of luck to break their way.

The offensive tackle position could be problematic. The upside of both Wright and left tackle Braxton Jones is apparent — both have everything one could want from a physical standpoint. Wright played well at Tennessee last year and there’s no reason to second-guess the team for picking him. That said, it isn’t unusual for tackles to struggle as rookies.

Teams can usually live with rookie struggles, but Braxton Jones is hardly a proven commodity on the other side. He played well for a fifth-round pick last year, but still wasn’t playing at what most would consider a starting level. In 206 true pass sets — defined by Pro Football Focus as pass plays that exclude plays with fewer than four rushers, play action, screens, short drop backs and time to throw under two seconds — Jones allowed 30 pressures. That’s the 10th most in the league, despite having just 206 snaps in those situations. PFF graded Jones’ pass blocking efficiency in true pass sets 57th out of 60 players with at least 150 true pass sets. He wasn’t even as efficient as Larry Borom was as a rookie, though the upsides of both players aren’t close.

Going into camp without any competition for Jones is certainly a bet on upside and coaching. If it pays off, Ryan Poles and company will look like geniuses. If it doesn’t and Wright goes through typical rookie struggles, the Bears are going to have a major problem.

The concerns aren’t limited to the tackle position though.

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I went to St. Peter’s Prep in Jersey City, New Jersey, a noted football powerhouse. During the years I attended the school, 1996-2000, we were anything but a powerhouse. I don’t remember the records each season but I’m pretty certain we lost more games than we won, and the student body enjoyed the work of our mascots, the Marauder and Henchmen, of which I was a proud member of the latter, more than the play of the athletes on the field.

Nevertheless, during this period, the football players had the run of the school. When they didn’t want to go to class, they didn’t, claiming they required medical attention. When teachers challenged their absences, they were strong-armed by head football coach Rich Hansen and the athletics department. Remember, these guys were not “bigger than life” on campus. They were crappy football players on a crappy football team. Nobody was afraid of them. But that didn’t matter. The fear that existed, if that’s the right word, was of the empowered athletic department.

I thought about St. Peter’s Prep as the stories of hazing at Northwestern became national news, due to the brilliant student journalism at The Daily Northwestern. This is not the space to rehash those heinous allegations, but as the stories now circulate through the whole of the university’s athletics department, one thing is clear: the relationship between academic institutions and athletics has been irrevocably broken by an economic empowerment of those running athletic programs and a cult-like exaltation of the most comically fraudulent label in our culture, the “student-athlete.”

College athletics, and mostly college football, is an abhorrent, repulsive, corrupt business. Universities salivate over the financial windfall provided an elite football (or sometimes basketball) program and relish the increase in application rate that accompanies that success. But the culture of college football is forged on pee wee and high school fields all over the country, every day. Coaches are adorned with an absurd infallibility, as if they’re not just guys who likes whistles and got a discount on dry erase boards down the local Walmart. Parents behave like grotesqueries; surrealist portraits of what it means to be an adult and raise a child. And the children, who are still children even when they’ve enrolled at university, simply don’t know any better. That is why when these allegations surfaced against Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald, his players quickly released a group statement in his support. Not because they believe their behavior as a football team was okay, but because they were never taught to know any better.

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Training camp is that magical time of year when every NFL fan can have exactly what they want. If you are an optimist who wants to believe your favorite team is going to be good, there’s plenty of reason for hope. If you get your jollies on being negative (you know who you are), it’s not hard to find something to be pessimistic about.

Regardless of which side of the fence you fall on, today’s article will have something for you. Let’s go through the roster position-by-position and identify why you should be hopeful and why you should be concerned. We did the offense yesterday, so today will focus on the defense.

Defensive Line

Reason for hope: Uhhh… this isn’t exactly an easy place to start. I guess it can’t be worse than last year, when the pass rush was arguably the worst the NFL has seen in the last five years after trading Robert Quinn away midseason. The Bears return Justin Jones and Trevis Gipson, who are both capable but not dominant players, and invested in a whole host of players between free agency (DeMarcus Walker, Andrew Billings, Rasheem Green) and the draft (Gervon Dexter, Zacch Pickens). Dexter in particular has a ton of physical tools and earned rave reviews throughout offseason practices, and could be a rookie who surprises. This group probably won’t be great at rushing the passer, but they don’t have to be to still be effective and help the Bears have a competent defense (as DBB’s Andrew Dannehy pointed out a few weeks ago).

Cause for concern: Barring a rookie stepping up in a big way, nobody on the roster even remotely resembles a top-level starter that can produce while drawing extra defensive attention. At best, this defensive line is a bunch of secondary pieces who can hopefully hold up against the run, but won’t offer much else. You know it’s bad when Terrell Lewis – who enters his 4th NFL season with 6 career sacks and is switching from LB to DE this offseason – drew the most hype of any defensive lineman during OTAs.

Linebacker

Reason for hope: The Bears signed two of the best linebackers available on the free agent market in Tremaine Edmunds and TJ Edwards. Both are solid all-around players who can defend the run and the pass, and they are just entering their primes as they prepare for their 5th NFL season. The depth behind them is pretty solid too, as Jack Sanborn impressed as a rookie last year and 5th round pick Noah Sewell drew positive reports from OTAs when he ran with the starters while Sanborn was out hurt.

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Training camp is that magical time of year when every NFL fan can have exactly what they want. If you are an optimist who wants to believe your favorite team is going to be good, there’s plenty of reason for hope. If you get your jollies on being negative (you know who you are), it’s not hard to find something to be pessimistic about.

Regardless of which side of the fence you fall on, today’s article will have something for you. Let’s go through the roster position-by-position and identify why you should be hopeful and why you should be concerned. We’ll start today with the offense, and move to the defense tomorrow.

Quarterback

Reason for hope: Justin Fields took a small step forward in Year 2, and now enters Year 3 with a vastly improved supporting cast and familiarity with the offense, both of which are firsts for his NFL career. He fits the criteria for making the leap to superstardom better than any other young QB in the NFL.

Cause for concern: Fields takes a ton of sacks and has really struggled on short and quick passes so far in the NFL. Those passes make up a bulk of a QB’s pass attempts, and there is no guarantee he gets better there. If he can’t improve at the easy stuff, he’s never going to be a quality NFL starter.

Running Back

Reason for hope: Khalil Herbert and D’Onta Foreman are two of the best rushers in the NFL, as they finished 4th and 7th, respectively, in rush yards over expectation in 2022. They are both significantly better runners than David Montgomery, which should improve Chicago’s rushing attack that was already among the best in the NFL.

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The wait is finally (almost) over — Bears training camp is (nearly) upon us!

Rookies have reported to Halas Hall already, Veterans report tomorrow, and practices officially start Wednesday — that means more content is coming for all of us that starved through the dog days of the offseason, and it’s the perfect time to start previewing  what I think will be the best storylines to follow throughout camp this year.

For starters: How will Roschon Johnson fit into the 2023 Bears’ RB room?

Before the Draft took place, the 2023 Bears’ RB room was well-rounded in theory but a bit over-specialized in practice:

• Khalil Herbert is a fabulous runner and a perfect system fit, but both his pass-blocking and pass-catching can be outright liabilities when the offense gets behind the chains
• D’Onta Foreman brings experience to the Bears as a hard-nosed one-cut RB, but offenses have avoided asking him to catch the ball since he first he got to the league and I doubt the Bears will expect much out of him in that phase of the game
• Travis Homer is a capable Special Teamer and all-around 3rd Down RB, but unless the Bears deviate from 2022 (where Herbert & Montgomery rarely substituted mid-drive, opting to rotate between offensive possessions) it may be hard to get him on the field for passing scenarios outside obvious 3rd downs

All of these RBs are talented players that produce well when playing to their strengths, but as of early April none of the RBs looked ready to take on an old-school 3-down role within an offense that’s utilized 3-down runners (Christian McCaffrey, Aaron Jones, etc) to great effect — if an RB can capably sell Play Action, block on dropbacks, produce when handed the ball, and catch the ball when it’s thrown to him, this offensive scheme rewards him handsomely with open space and yardage galore.

Enter Roschon Johnson, a 22 year old out of Texas with remarkably little tread on his tires due to sitting behind phenom runner Bijan Robinson for all but his freshman year. This 6’2″ 220+lb has all the traits you’re looking for on tape, including:

• A quick first step that helps challenge tackling angles from the moment he takes the handoff
• A clear preference for playing North-South (as opposed to East-West)
• The explosion to get to wide lanes when needed (3rd clip is a great example of him exploding laterally multiple times while staying downhill throughout)
• The contact balance to grind out extra yards and a wicked stiff arm to boot
• Experience blocking in both standard pass sets and less orthodox sets (ex: on the move)
• Solid hands, though his tape lacks opportunities in the pass game due to circumstance

And if you ask me, he has an opportunity to play in Chicago very quickly if he makes an impression in Training Camp.

This city is going to LOVE Texas RB Roschon Johnson.

He's a true 3-down RB with the explosion to make hard cuts & the contact balance to break tackles en masse. He gets downhill, finishes carries, and he blocks (!) on pass downs.

Should boost the #Bears PA pass game. FUN player pic.twitter.com/5OBnZHE4tE

— Robert Schmitz (@robertkschmitz) May 8, 2023

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Happy Friday everybody!

Like most football fans, I’ve always been enthralled by the concept of play-calling — the idea that one man pulls the strings behind the actions of 11 superathletes and that, at least in the eyes of many, the very fate of each football game rests on his shoulders and his matchup with the play-caller across from him. Even typing that out gives me chills!

But as cool as the concept of play-calling is, the opaque nature of the role makes it equally frustrating for football fans: “Why can Andy Reid’s team spin around in the huddle and still score touchdowns at will but my team can’t even pick up a 3rd and 1?”

Questions like this are poison for fans of teams with bad offensive or defensive units (like the Broncos, Cardinals, and early-season Bears on offense, Browns, Las Vegas, and the Bears again on defense) and can make fans feel like the football gods are out to get them — for any Chicago fan that lived through the Nagy era, you know the horrible feeling I’m talking about.

So how do we evaluate the Bears’ play-callers in 2023? I aim to do just that with a video series I’ll be running throughout this upcoming season called Dissecting a Drive — once a week, we’ll take a look at a key offensive or defensive drive (some good drives, some bad ones) and go through the ins and outs of each play-call to try and parse out which parts of the offense are a credit to Luke Getsy and which parts of the offense are as simple as good (or bad) players making a good (or bad) play.

In an effort to practice with the new video format, I took a look at an old drive from Week 5’s Bears game against the Vikings — in it, we see:

• A pair of really nice run designs that use pre-snap and at-snap motion to scheme leverage for Chicago’s blockers
• How Justin Fields can make a “wrong” play-call “right” (as well as how he did the opposite)
• A visual example of how important every yard gained or lost is within each 3-down series
• And much, much more

Check it out and let me know what you think!

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Camp approaches, which means it’s time for me to grade the roster. Like I’ve done the last few years, I’ll grade on a 1-10 scale, with 1 being the worst in the NFL, 10 being the best, and 5 being an average NFL unit. Let’s get right down to it.

Defensive Ends: 1

Key Players: DeMarcus Walker, Trevis Gipson, Rasheem Green, Dominique Robinson

Others: Terrell Lewis, Jalen Harris, Jalyn Holmes, D’Anthony Jones

This group is bad. Like, really bad. The saddest part is that this is still a significant improvement to what they had after trading Robert Quinn away last year, as Walker is clearly better than the departed Al-Quadin Muhammad, and Green improves the depth. Trevis Gipson is a capable rotational pass rusher when he’s not the guy opposing offenses are worried about, so I’m hopeful he can have something of a bounceback 2023.

This position group is the perfect storm of bad veterans and also no rookies to even consider getting excited about. Unless Dominique Robinson takes a massive step up from a disappointing rookie season, this should easily be the worst position group on the roster (and one of the worst overall in the NFL). It’s still possible Ryan Poles finally makes the defensive end signing he’s been teasing at for a few months, but even then the available options will likely take them from awful to bad.

Defensive Tackles: 2

Key Players: Justin Jones, Andrew Billings, Gervon Dexter Sr., Zacch Pickens

Others: Travis Bell, Andrew Brown, Donovan Jeter

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