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.

Quarterback: 4

Key Players: Justin Fields, PJ Walker

Others: Nathan Peterman, Tyson Bagent

I should start here by noting that I’m grading based on past production so that I don’t project what I personally think will happen in the future. After a terrible 1st month, Fields more or less spent the bulk of his sophomore campaign as an average passer and elite runner, though he also took a ton of sacks, and a decent number of them were his fault. There is some hope he can make a Year 3 leap towards superstardom, but until he does, it’s hard to rank him much higher than average.

The overall grade gets dinged because of depth; Fields has missed multiple games due to injury in each of his first two seasons, and PJ Walker seems like a less than ideal backup with a career 58% completion rate, 6.4 yards per attempt, and 5 TD to 11 INT. Peterman and Bagent will compete to be the practice squad QB, and we can only hope that we don’t see either of them take a meaningful snap this season.

Running Back: 5

Key Players: Khalil Herbert, D’Onta Foreman, Roschon Johnson

Others: Travis Homer, Trestan Ebner, Khari Blasingame, Robert Burns

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Rookie LT Braxton Jones came out of nowhere in the Bears’ 2022 OTAs and, against all odds, he managed to become the only Chicago offensive lineman to start all 17 games in the season and was named to the PFWA All-Rookie Team along with Jack Sanborn and Jaquan Brisker. For a 5th round tackle, a rookie season doesn’t get much better than that.

But Offensive Tackle in the NFL is a cutthroat position, and unfortunately for Jones he picked a rough Offensive Line to play all 17 games with — Justin Fields was sacked a league-leading 55 times in 2022 (on a staggering 14.7% of his dropbacks), and big #70 was on the field for every last one of them. The sacks weren’t all his fault, but he had plenty of growing pains as a pass-protector that cost the Bears downs in the process.

Yet as the season progressed, Braxton continually shined in the run game and proved himself to one of the Bears’ best blockers in open space. Luke Getsy clearly noticed this and leaned on Jones more each week, calling most of the Bears’ pitch/toss runs to Braxton’s side and watching his offense succeed as he did. By the end of the year, rookie Braxton Jones had asserted himself as the Bears’ de-facto run game captain and, despite injuries to his unit, continued to lead the Bears each week as they ultimately out-rushed the rest of the league.

Now a second-year pro, Braxton is already an established rushing weapon at a premium position whose current contract is cheap enough (~68th highest paid Left Tackle in the league) to afford the Bears the resources to stock talent at other positions. That’s great! But in a passing league, is a budget LT that’s great in the run game enough to succeed?

I took a deeper look into Braxton’s tape and put together a video that covers:

• Braxton’s impact in the running game
• Braxton’s growth as a pass-protector
• The schematic ways that Luke Getsy assists Jones when matched up against an elite pass rusher
• The cap/draft cost of attempting to replace him
• And much, much more

Check it out and let me know what you think!

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I want to start today by saying that I knew Cole Kmet was a fairly polarizing Chicago Bear, but I didn’t think he was this polarizing.

For those who didn’t catch Sunday’s news, Jaguars TE Evan Engram agreed to a contract extension worth $42.5 million dollars over 3 years, equating to an Average Annual Value of $14.16M/Y. And while Evan Engram is 28 years old, now on his second team, and had the leverage of Jacksonville’s franchise tag helping him get a deal done, his $14M+ price tag begs the question — how much is Cole Kmet worth on the open market?

Statistically speaking, Engram (a ‘move’ tight end, basically a big receiver) and Kmet (a ‘Y’ tight end, basically a blocker that catches sometimes) have surprisingly similar passing game production — Engram edges Kmet in yardage (766 yards vs 544 yards), but Kmet out-produced Engram in:

• Yards-Per-Reception (Kmet: 10.9 y/r, Engram: 10.5 y/r)
• Yards-Per-Target (Kmet: 7.9 y/t, Engram: 7.8 y/t)
• Touchdowns (Kmet: 7 in 2022 & 9 in last 3 years, Engram: 4 in 2022 & 8 in the last 3 years)
• Percentage of Total Passing Yards, or Market Share (Kmet: 20.93% of total passing yards, Engram: 18.62% of total passing yards)

And of course, Kmet is a markedly better blocker & much more involved in Chicago’s run game than Engram is in Jacksonville’s. If Cole’s agent argues that his 24-year-old client is one of the best young players at his position, statistically he has a case that Kmet’s teammate Jaylon Johnson doesn’t.

Thus, when I posted about Kmet’s price tag on Twitter, I expected to receive a ho-hum response to his likely extension price. Instead, I got well over 100 comments that split exclusively between ‘of course he’s worth that money’ and ‘absolutely no way can you pay him like that’ with very few comments in the middle.

I was shocked at how black-and-white everyone spoke about the former golden-domer — whether you thought he had earned his payday or not, clearly everyone’s answer seemed obvious to them. But why?

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I’m in the process of working up a Braxton Jones video that I hope to have ready by Monday — in the meantime, here’s a breakdown I threw together yesterday about a funky formation wrinkle Luke Getsy used to catch the Lions’ linebackers flat-footed on subsequent plays.

Formation gimmicks are fun, hopefully we see Getsy use offensive design to press the advantage more often in 2023.

Here's a fun design wrinkle from #Bears OC Luke Getsy — after a bootleg run for a 1st down, Getsy shifted LT Braxton Jones to the right side of the OL and thus caught the Lions' defense over-adjusting.

Turn your sound on and I'll break down how a little WR motion goes a long… pic.twitter.com/AaqjVAYE2v

— Robert Schmitz (@robertkschmitz) July 13, 2023

Extra Media

As we get closer to training camp, something tells me we’re going to hear the terms “1-Technique” and “3-Technique” thrown around a lot when discussing Gervon Dexter Sr and Zacch Pickens — in case you don’t know what those terms mean, I’ve got just the video for you! And if you do know what they mean, here’s a nice ~10 minute reel of defensive lineman dominating.

Check it out!

There’s no need for a fancy intro paragraph today — Justin Fields did things with his feet last year that the NFL had never yet seen from a Quarterback and everyone on this site lived each moment more than once.

Justin Fields scored THREE times from 50+ yards on the ground in 2022, which no other QB has done in their *total career*.

That doesn't count the 53-yd TD @ MIN that got called back, nor his 60-yd scramble @ DET.

I get "QB rushing is unsustainable", but Fields is different. pic.twitter.com/dmKlMyBzeU

— Robert Schmitz (@robertkschmitz) May 29, 2023

In doing so Fields put the league’s defenses on notice and, by the end of the season, so consistently drew extra attention that he opened up seams for his teammates to take advantage of.

Unfortunately for Fields, those teammates were Dante Pettis, Michael Schofield, Larry Borom, and plenty of others that simply didn’t have the talent to make the most of their opportunities. Even still, we saw early glimpses of how attempts to contain Fields might backfire in 2023 — that’s what we’ll go over today. Let’s dig in.

The Passing Game

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We’re officially 2 weeks out from the start of Bears’ training camp, and that means we’re 14 days away from obsessively scrolling Twitter (and other social media platforms) for updates on Chicago Bears’ practices. With that in mind, let’s spend the next two weeks re-familiarizing ourselves with the Bears’ new additions so that, come camp time, we know the names to watch for.

To start, let’s look at…

Tremaine Edmunds

Backstory: Edmunds was the 16th overall pick of the 2018 draft and, ironically enough, was constantly compared to Roquan Smith pre-draft due their differences in style & perceived value. Edmunds had the size, length, and speed that made linebacking coaches salivate but whose instincts needed serious development whereas Roquan was seen as the ready-made modern WILL LB prototype despite being undersized.

It’s a bizarre twist of fate that the Bears effectively traded one standout first-round linebacker for another (while netting draft picks in the process) in their journey from Roquan to Edmunds, but based on Matt Eberflus’ penchant for size and length in his coverage linebackers I can’t help feeling like Edmunds will get featured within Chicago’s defense in ways that Alan Williams didn’t want to feature Smith.

I’m not normally one for paying Linebackers at the rate you could pay a formidable defensive lineman, but physical freaks like Edmunds  always command a hefty price tag — just watch him move in open space and you’ll see rare physical gifts on display. Suffice it to say, you can’t teach those traits — when pursuing a ball-carrier side-to-side, he’s a nightmare.

#Bears new LB Tremaine Edmunds is an EXPLOSIVE mover.

Watch him plant, drive, and track down the RB to make this stop on 3rd down. For a 6'5, 250lb man to do that? Sheeeeesh. pic.twitter.com/SBRzIjzBoA

— Robert Schmitz (@robertkschmitz) March 14, 2023

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It’s hard to believe that Bears’ CB Jaylon Johnson only turned 24 this April — if you’re like me, it feels like he’s been in the league too long to be that young.

And yet, it is. The 24-year-old former 2nd round pick just wrapped his 3rd season as a Chicago Bear & his 2nd as the team’s best cornerback, thus a question arises as he enters the final year of his rookie deal: Should Ryan Poles offer him a contract extension?

You’d think that extending a player like Johnson would be a no-brainer — he’s experienced as a CB1 and has already performed well in the role, he’s wildly young, and the Bears have so much cap space in 2024 and 2025 that to not extend a young player at a key position like Corner feels like irresponsible roster management. After all, the best way to combat the NFL’s Wide Receiver arms race is to stack talent at DB, right? Why create a roster hole you’d need to spend resources to fill when you’ve already got a CB1 in-house?

Like most things in this world, Johnson’s payday isn’t a question of talent — this is about money. Jaylon Johnson (who recently fired his agent) likely wants to be paid like a top-shelf CB1 (~$20M/Year), but unfortunately for Jaylon recent Corner contracts have not made his value a friendly figure to calculate. In fact, currently there are:

• Only 5 total Corners making $19.4+ Million per year
• Only 8 total Corners making $15M+ per year
• Only 17 total Corners making $10M+ per year

(A snippet of the current CB market is pictured below — click to enlarge)

As such, it’s clear that the NFL recognizes a clear distinction between a “High End CB1”, a “Mid-Table CB1”, and “Everyone Else” (including players Rookies like Derek Stingley Jr, the 23rd highest paid CB in football, as well as CB2s, etc). Johnson currently belongs in that “Mid-Table CB1” category, but would he sign an extension of $12M-$15M per year if it was offered to him? Or would he bet on himself in 2023 by playing out his final year? Personally, I have no idea.

As Training Camp gets underway, I’m excited to find out.

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As Jeff has posted (and posted and posted and posted and posted) about, today I start as the Editor in Chief of DaBearsBlog! I’m truly honored that I get to work hard writing stories, peeling apart football games, and covering every inch of the Chicago Bears with this community. Let’s get started!

For those I haven’t met yet, I’m Robert Schmitz. I’m a Texan that’s cheered for the Bears my entire life — my Great Grandfather Clarence Schmitz played for the team in the 1920s (or so I’ve been told) and since then my family has bled Navy and Orange, to the point that our fandom has driven my Cowboys-fan Mother crazy. We still huddle around the TV every fall Sunday to watch the games and I doubt that’ll change anytime soon.

I’m an analyst that loves the controlled chaos of football’s every play — eleven of the best athletes on the planet move in concert to advance an oblong leather ball while eleven more superhumans move to stop them. Some of the best minds in the world pour decades of their life into plotting, planning, and scheming up new ways to move this ball 10 yards at a time down a 100-yard grid so that they can score 6 points and ask Cody Parkey to get them a 7th.

It’s a bizarre game, but it’s a beautiful game — I love it. I want to study it and learn more about it, and that’s exactly what we’ll do throughout this football season at DBB.

I laid out my “vision” for DBB’s future a few weeks ago, but practically speaking it’ll look like the same daily posts that you’ve come to expect. Our topics will run the Bears’ gamut — player profiles, postgame notes, opinion columns, basically anything other than Haikus will land on the site at one point or another. Jeff, Andrew, and JW will still contribute as they have, so there’ll be a bevy of perspectives to see the game from. And with Jeff still around, maybe I shouldn’t count out Haikus just yet.

We’re only just 16 days away from the start of Bears’ training camp, so it’s about time we get this show on the road. Tomorrow I’ll have something put together about Jaylon Johnson and his case for an extension, but for today I’ll leave you with a question:

Do you think the Bears will win more than 8 games in 2023? Why or why not?

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I have run this site

every day for eighteen years.

It’s been my pleasure.

But be warned, I’m still going to be writing quite often, including a renewed focus on my game previews in-season.

In Part I, we saw that DJ Moore is a legitimate WR1 who should excel with better QB play, Darnell Mooney is a quality WR2 who is pretty well-rounded, and Chase Claypool can be a solid starter if he rebounds from a disastrous 2022 season. Today, we’re going to look at their involvement in the passing game through a number of other lenses.

Targets by Depth

Let’s start by looking at how frequently and effectively Chicago’s WRs were targeted at various depths of the field. The table below shows their stats compared to 80 NFL WRs with 50+ targets in 2022. Areas where they ranked in the top 25% are highlighted in green, while areas in the bottom 25% are highlighted in red. All data is from Pro Football Focus (PFF). 

(Side note: sorry if the formatting is poor for the graph. You can click on it to see it in a new window in full if it’s not showing up right for you.)

A few thoughts:

• • The first thing that stands out is that all three WRs saw a high percent of their targets deep down the field. This fully matches with where Justin Fields likes to throw, and should make for some fun football in 2023 as the Bears live out every Madden player’s fantasy and go bombs away.
    • Of course, the efficiency each WR posted on those downfield passes was not as stellar as the volume.
      • Moore was generally above average in the 20+ yard range after being around average in volume and effectiveness in 2020-21. It’s worth noting, however, that More has spent his last three years in Carolina catching passes from a poo-poo platter of QBs, and his overall deep efficiency has been much better than anybody else on the Panthers. It is reasonable to expect that he will be better on deep balls in 2023 catching passes from a better deep ball passer.
      • Mooney was generally below average on deep balls in 2022, which was disappointing considering how well Fields did overall throwing to that area. Mooney was much better on deep passes from Fields in 2021, which gives hope that he can rebound now that he is no longer the WR1 drawing the bulk of defensive attention.
      • Claypool really struggled on deep balls (and pretty much everything else) in 2022, but he was much better in 2020-21, when he saw an even higher 25% of his targets 20+ yards down the field and posted respectable catch rates (35%) and yards/target marks (12.6).
    • On the flip side, Moore and Mooney saw a very low rate of their targets on short passes 0-9 yards downfield, which is an area where Fields has really struggled so far in his career. All three players also struggled when they were targeted short. That may not mesh well with helping Fields grow and improve.
      • It is worth noting that the short game was a big change for Moore in 2022. In 2020-21, he saw 40% of his targets in this range, and posted a highly respectable 72% catch rate and 7.7 yards/target. This gives hope that Moore’s short struggles in 2022 were more due to the offense and QB play than any deficiency on Moore’s part.
      • Likewise, Claypool saw much different short target usage prior to 2022, seeing far fewer targets in this range (39%) but being much more effective with them (78% catch rate, 7.4 yards/target).
    • For the 2nd year in a row, Mooney saw a high rate of targets behind the line of scrimmage but posted poor efficiency on those targets. I’m sure coaches are thinking that getting him the ball on screens gives him a chance to use his blazing speed to pick up easy yards, but it doesn’t seem to be working well, so hopefully we see less of that in 2023.

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