When the Chicago Bears hired Luke Getsy, there was fear that he would only be with the team for one year. While he had never been an NFL offensive coordinator, Getsy was a highly thought of assistant coach and interviewed to be the head coach of the Denver Broncos. Many thought he would get more looks with even moderate success in Chicago.

But that didn’t happen.

Getsy’s offense finished 31st in yardage, 28th in scoring and 25th in DVOA. They were first in rushing, but dead last — by a reasonable margin — in passing. While it’s debatable how much of that is Getsy’s fault, the reality is NFL general managers didn’t see enough to consider bringing the Bears offensive coordinator in for an interview.

Getsy did some really good things in his first year with the Bears. The team went through a fairly long streak of having a good offense until injuries piled up late. But Getsy also deserves blame for their slow start; it shouldn’t have taken until the “mini-bye” to change the offense to fit the skillset of the quarterback. They had 48 net passing yards in Week 2, 82 in Week 3; clearly their plan entering the season was inadequate.

There was a lack of talent, sure, but the team’s passing offense was historically bad. The Mitch Trubisky/Mike Glennon Bears had nearly 1,000 more passing yards in one fewer game with Kendall Wright as the leading wide receiver.

There may still be a question about Justin Fields, but the young quarterback showed promise early in his career. Say what you will about Matt Nagy’s Bears but the team adjusted and there was reason to be optimistic about the passing game going forward. After the embarrassing one net-passing yard display against Cleveland, the team didn’t have fewer than 100 the rest of the season. That was with a rookie version of Fields and a supporting cast that wasn’t all that different from what Getsy was given.

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Normally this kind of statement is hyperbolic, but Tremaine Edmunds is literally one of the biggest inside linebackers in NFL History (based on recent combine tracking data) https://t.co/CjBavbO6im pic.twitter.com/EGdLxWNwmr

— Robert Schmitz (@robertkschmitz) June 15, 2023

One of the more underrated elements of this off-season has been the Bears fortifying their linebacking unit into one of the best in the sport.

True story. About a year ago (I think) I got word from a source close to Ted Phillips that the former team president was cutting his workday short to pay a visit to Virginia McCaskey. Virginia’s family was concerned the illness with which she was suffering at that time might be the one to finally take her out. Ted, essentially a member of the McCaskey family, did not want to miss what might be a final opportunity to thank the matriarch of the Chicago Bears for giving him the opportunity to lead the franchise he loves. I wrote a column about it called In Praise of Virginia McCaskey. I never wrote “Virginia McCaskey is dying.” As a matter of fact, I deliberately did not speculate on her health, even joking about the notion of “good health” for someone in their late-90s. And yet days after my column posted, I was inundated with folks on social media criticizing me for Virginia McCaskey’s continued existence.

You see, what happened was, nobody read the post. Nobody read what was, in fact, my attempt at a living eulogy, a column I have been told Virginia read and enjoyed immensely. They simply read the first paragraph and ran with, “DaBearsBlog says Virginia McCaskey will be dead in minutes.”

I don’t know Marc Silverman (Silvy) personally, but I feel like I do, and he has been a pivotal part of the success of DBB. Here’s what I imagine happened last week. Someone in Lake Forest told Silvy that the team is frustrated with Chase Claypool’s progress. Silvy went on his radio show and shared that information. But he didn’t say, “CHASE CLAYPOOL IS A BUST AND THE BEARS REGRET THE TRADE!” He actually said there were frustrations, which there usually are when injuries are involved, and the ball was now effectively in Claypool’s court. He sounded, at least to me, completely measured and perfectly reliable. But the next thing you know, it is a nationally aggregated headline and the whole of #BearsTwitter is “forced” to respond, themselves having no earthly clue what anyone inside Halas Hall thinks about anything.

Here’s what I know about Chase Claypool. I know he was an incredibly productive receiver over the first two years of his career, averaging 60-860-5. I know Ryan Poles loved his unique set of skills enough to deliver the Steelers a second-round draft pick in the middle of the 2022 campaign. And I know that Claypool was relatively unproductive in the months that followed, unsurprising since he joined the worst team in the league and his quarterback fought through injuries over the final month. Do I think Claypool is going to be a star in Chicago? I have no idea. Do I think Claypool is going to be out of Chicago after the 2023 season? I have no idea. But I am willing to wait until he has a full off-season with a quarterback who likes him a quite a bit so that I can judge him over the course of a full campaign.

And I can tell you what someone inside Halas Hall told me about the Chase Claypool story: “They are out there running around in shorts. What is there to be frustrated about?” (This person was on vacation and accompanied their text response with a picture of blue water and a green beverage.) The subtext of this comment: frustrations with Claypool, and Claypool’s overall production, are not that important big picture. If wasting a second-round pick brings this building down, the structural integrity never existed at the start.

So why did this innocuous Silvy comment gain such traction? The answer is not complicated. The sports media landscape is now a conglomerate of aggregators; folks who do none of their own research, cultivate none of their own sources, write at about a seventh-grade level, and get paid by the click. They scavenge the internet for anything they can turn into a search result on Google. It seems a miserably hollow existence to me, but to each their own. These aggregators feed off the notion that NFL fans are the most impatient human beings to be found in the whole of the sports world. Everything has to be a scoop. Every post has to be posited as news.

These aggregators also believe fans are stupid and more often than not they are proven correct. I’ve always said about the phrase “snake oil salesman” that we only know that phrase because people bought a ton snake oil! Off the record, the folks doing this work will tell you their mandate is simply to create as many posts as possible. They don’t care about the veracity of the content because they are shielded by the notion that it is not their content. They’re just the messengers. Google Chase Claypool and here is what the aggregators will tell you.

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Another Friday. Another post with a cat pun title.

• AP: “The Athletic, a subscription sports outlet owned by The New York Times, is laying off about 4% of its newsroom staff as part of reorganization efforts, the company confirmed on Monday.” The venture capitalist structure does not work in the media. Any media. The Athletic was never going to be able to develop a subscriber base that validated the breadth of their talent investment. Are there GREAT people working for The Athletic? Of course. They have the best Bears team in Chicago. But the numbers don’t add up.
• Now Waukegan is throwing their hat in the ring for the new Bears stadium. Will it happen? No. Folks inside Halas Hall still believe Arlington Heights is the most logical outcome. (The team’s meeting with Brandon Johnson went well but without public money, the team isn’t building a new structure in the city.)
• NBC Chicago: NFL.com named Justin Fields and DJ Moore a top-15 duo and I think they’ll be solidly in the top ten this season. Said one source who has been at these practices: “They are going to field the ball to Moore like he’s one of the best receivers in the league.”
• ACTUAL BEARS NEWS: A young black bear swam onto the beach in Destin, Florida and it is a pretty remarkable video.
• Justin Jones wishes Aaron Rodgers were still in Green Bay so he could beat him. He also decided to call their fans “shitty”. There have been a lot of incredibly dumb things said by Bears players over the years but this ranks near the top. First, the Bears never beat Rodgers. Ever. And they wouldn’t have beaten him this season either. Second, why are players taking shots at opposing fans? It is beyond childish.
• Hadn’t noticed that Ryan Poles purchased a home in Lincolnshire for $2.07M.
• Jack Sanborn was one of the rare positives on the defense in 2022, but early reports suggest he’ll be in a tough competition with Noah Sewell to stay on the field. Bigger point: it doesn’t matter. Sanborn is a that cliche we often hear, he’s a “football player.” He will find a way to be a contributing member of this roster.

Enjoy your weekend!

Much of the current discussion regarding the 2023 Chicago Bears has been about the need to add another pass rusher. While that certainly would be nice, Eberflus has already shown us he doesn’t need a great pass rush to have a productive defense. Do the Bears certainly need to get after the quarterback better than they did in 2022, when they managed an abysmal 20 sacks and pressured quarterbacks on just 15.9 percent of drop backs, ranking 32nd and 31st in the league? Of course. But the truth is, Eberflus never had a great pass rush in Indianapolis and still managed to produce quality defenses every year.

In his four seasons as the Colts defensive coordinator, the team never ranked better than 18th in pressure percentage (per Pro Football Reference) or 12th in sacks and were never worse than 18th in scoring defense or 16th in yardage. The key to Eberflus’ defense is takeaways, something he has managed to do annually despite not getting pressure.

The Colts were top ten in takeaways every year Eberflus called their defense. In his final season in Indianapolis, they were second in takeaways, despite ranking 31st in pressure percentage and 25th in sacks. Even last year, the Bears did a good job taking the ball away, finishing 14th in the league, despite their inability to breath on opposing quarterbacks.

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In the last two days, we’ve looked in depth at tight end Cole Kmet’s production, and found that he’s not going to be a guy you build your passing attack around, but has proven he’s a solid secondary receiving weapon who fits well in Chicago’s current offense. We also saw earlier this offseason that Kmet is a solid run blocker, which the Bears clearly value in this scheme.

Since he has finished three years in the NFL, Kmet is eligible for an early contract extension that could lock him in to Chicago through his prime. Ryan Poles stated earlier this offseason that he would be looking to sign a few key young players to extensions before the season starts, and Kmet seems like the most obvious candidate there.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the tight end market to see what Kmet’s deal could end up looking like.

Favorable Comparisons (Kmet)

Let’s start by looking at contracts Cole Kmet’s camp will point to as deals signed by comparable players. The table below shows five such deals signed by tight ends in the last two years.

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In Part I, we saw that both Cole Kmet and Robert Tonyan are used more against zone than man coverage, and 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 tight ends were targeted at various depths of the field. The table below shows their stats compared to 29 NFL tight ends 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 both Kmet and Tonyan were heavily targeted on screen passes behind the line of scrimmage. Kmet in particular was good at converting these into yards by running well with the ball after the catch, a skill that he also showed in 2021 and the Bears did a good job of utilizing more frequently in 2022.
• Looking at Kmet beyond the line of scrimmage, he was rarely targeted in the intermediate range, but he was highly productive there when targeted. This closely matches Justin Fields’ passing profile in 2022, so hopefully Fields can target that area more aggressively in 2023 and Kmet can benefit.
  • Kmet’s deep passing profile, where he saw a high target volume with average efficiency, also matches Fields’ 2022 performance.
  • Where we see Kmet appreciably outperform Fields as a whole is in the short game, where Kmet was around average in pass efficiency while Fields struggled mightily on all of his passes. That matches what we also saw with Fields throwing to other solid pass catchers like Darnell Mooney and David Montgomery, so there is hope that improving the talent on the field around Fields will naturally improve the short game in 2023.
• Part of that improving talent comes from Tonyan, who excelled in the short game but didn’t do much down the field.
  • The downfield struggles are a distinct change from 2020, when 35% of Tonyan’s targets were at least ten yards downfield and he caught 75% of those passes for 16.1 yards/target.
  • Like we said in Part I, 2023 will be year two after his knee injury, which is when many players return closer to their pre-injury norms, and 2020 (pre-injury) Tonyan was a significantly better player than the 2022 version.

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All of a sudden, the Bears’ TE room looks fairly stacked, as they return Cole Kmet – who led the team in receiving in 2022 – and added veteran Robert Tonyan as their TE2. As you can see in the table below, this gives Chicago two TEs who put up starting-caliber volume in 2022.

Of course, volume isn’t everything.

It is also worth exploring how efficient a player was with the targets they received. The table below shows some basic efficiency stats for Kmet and Tonyan in 2022, as well as ranks relative to the 29 NFL tight ends who saw at least 50 targets. The spread of outcomes for those 29 players is also shown to give more context overall. Any areas where a player ranked in the top 25% are highlighted in green, while the bottom 25% are highlighted in red. The table also includes Kmet’s stats from 2020 and 2021 to see how his efficiency has changed throughout his career.

A few thoughts:

• Kmet saw his volume drop from 93 to 69 targets in 2022, but his efficiency skyrocketed. This shows both Kmet’s growth as a player and a new offensive scheme that aligns with his skill set.
  • As we saw when looking at Jusin Fields earlier this offseason, the Bears used play action far more in 2022 than they did in 2021, and that deception was able to help free Kmet and mask his athletic deficiencies as a route runner. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to stats on play action for receivers, but this film study with Kmet shows a number of his big plays from 2022 coming when he was uncovered due to play action.
  • With the addition of DJ Moore this offseason, plus the return to health of Chase Claypool and Darnell Mooney, it’s reasonable to assume Kmet will be farther down the receiving order in 2023. He might see a decrease in total targets for a 2nd year in a row, but an efficient secondary weapon in the passing game can be extremely valuable.

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A lot going on when it comes to the periphery of the Bears these days.

• Broadcast Data! Our man appeared on something called Bears on Tap to talk all things Bears, and he was fantastic. (How many Bears podcasts and YouTube shows are there now? 500? How do any of these folks expect to get traction in such a crowded marketplace?)
• Yesterday I completed a three-week intensive course studying the work of British filmmaker and playwright Mike Leigh. If you’re interested in all in film studies, or just an intrigued human, our unique experiences from Leigh: Topsy-Turvy (1999), Another Year (2010), Secrets & Lies (1996) and Vera Drake (2004). Click those links to locate where the films can be found streaming.
• This piece from Laurence Holmes in the Sun-Times is absurd, as he argues Kevin Warren has ushered in a sea change at Halas Hall re: their (verbal) pivot away from Arlington Heights. There is no sea change. Ted Phillips fought with mayors for decades on behalf of the Bears and got what the team could get. This, now, is a negotiation about tax assessments. NFL franchises want states, counties, municipalities, etc. to bend over financially, and they almost always get what they want. Holmes also includes this nonsensical phrase: “I want what’s good for the Bears. I truly do, as long as it doesn’t infringe on the pockets of unwilling taxpayers.” In what world will it not?
• The joint statement from Warren and the new mayor after their meeting: “Today we met and discussed our shared values and commitment to the City of Chicago, the importance of deep roots and the need for equitable community investment throughout the city,” read the statement, which was credited to both Johnson and Warren. “We are both committed to the idea that the city and its major civic institutions must grow and evolve together to meet the needs of the future. We look forward to continuing the dialogue around these shared values.”
• The early buzz out of the Bears? D.J. Moore has changed the entire offense, and raised expectations for this unit can be in 2023.
• ACTUAL BEARS NEWS: Here’s video of a bear being rescued in Colorado after “breaking into” a food truck. I put that phrase in quotes because can we really accuse a bear of “breaking into” anything? Does it know the food truck is “closed”?
• Jaylon Johnson missed voluntary practice sessions because he just being a dad and Twitter spent a week arguing about it. (Once again, Twitter sucks.) Johnson is part of a union. That union collectively bargained when Johnson is responsible to report to work. Why on earth would he report on additional days? Would you?

Monday: Data takes a thorough look at the tight end position, as we INCH closer to the start of training camp.

The Chicago Bears shouldn’t be favored to win the NFC North, but they certainly have a shot to take what is now a weak division. The Lions are the favorites, and rightfully so, but Detroit missed a major opportunity to improve at key positions and further separate themselves from the rest of the division. The Minnesota Vikings are the defending champions, but their limp to the finish line brings up many questions. And the Packers, well, where do we start?

These are things Ryan Poles was surely looking at when he told The Athletic the team should contend for the NFC North. Here’s a quick snapshot at each of the teams and why the Bears could top them.

Detroit Lions

There’s a lot to like about the Detroit Lions but that can be found all over the internet. In short, the Lions had a top-five offense in 2022 and their defense allowed a hair over 20 points per game in the second half of the year. They finished 8-2 with convincing wins over the Vikings and Packers.

But there are issues with the Lions that are largely going ignored.

• They need quarterback Jared Goff to continue playing at a level at which he has not previously played.
• They need him to do this while being shorthanded at wide receiver. Losing DJ Chark wasn’t supposed to be significant because Jameson Williams was going to fill the void, stretching the field vertically, but Williams has been suspended for six games for gambling. Without Chark’s speed on the field — he missed six games — the powerful Lions offense averaged fewer than 20 points per game last year.
• The team made considerable investments in the running back position, but was that really a weakness last year? Jamaal Williams and D’Andre Swift combined for more than 1,600 rushing yards, with an average of 4.45 per carry and had 22 rushing touchdowns. Swift caught 48 passes for 389 yards and three more touchdowns. If they upgraded, it’s hard to see them being more productive.
• There’s also the matter of Ben Johnson. There’s no question that he is a bright offensive mind, but now teams will have a full season of work to study and figure out how to stop him.

We can comfortably assume Detroit’s defense will improve, after being bottom-five in both scoring and yardage last year. How much is a bit of a mystery, though. They made some improvements in the secondary but spent a first-round pick on an inside linebacker — a position that wasn’t a strength, but also not necessarily a weakness.

On paper, the Lions should be favored to win the NFC North. But it isn’t hard to see why that might not happen.

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