The Bears have three rookies with a chance to play meaningful roles on offense or defense this year, so I want to take some time this week to look at what history can tell us about what to expect for those players, both in their rookie seasons and in their careers. We looked yesterday at QB Caleb Williams, and today will focus on WR Rome Odunze, before ending tomorrow with a look at DE Austin Booker.

The Setup

To get a baseline for Odunze, I looked at all WRs drafted near him in the last 10 years. Odunze was drafted 9th overall, so I went +/- 5 picks and looked at WRs drafted between 4th and 14th. This gave a list of 17 players who were viewed fairly similarly to Odunze coming out of college, and enables us to see what history has to say about reasonable expectations for Odunze, both as a rookie and in his career.

Rookie Performance

With that setup in mind, let’s take a look at how those 17 WRs fared as rookies. Full data can be seen here, but the average stat line for these players was 13 games and 680 snaps played, with 91 targets leading to 54 catches for 766 yards and 5 TD.

That’s not bad – those values would have ranked 41st among WR in targets, 46th in receptions, 40th in yards, and 28th in TD. Basically, the average player in this sample has performed like a mid-tier WR2.

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The Bears have three rookies with a chance to play meaningful roles on offense or defense this year, so I want to take some time this week to look at what history can tell us about what to expect for those players, both in their rookie seasons and in their careers. We’ll start today with QB Caleb Williams, shift tomorrow to WR Rome Odunze, and end with a look at DE Austin Booker.

The Setup

To get a baseline for Caleb Williams, I looked at the last 10 QBs drafted 1st overall, going back to Sam Bradford in 2010. I only wanted to look at QBs drafted 1st overall because they are significantly different than other highly drafted QBs in a few notable ways:

• They start immediately. 9 of the 10 #1 picks in this sample started at least 10 games as rookie, with an average of 14.3 starts. 5 of the 19 QBs drafted 2-10 in the same years started fewer than 10 games, with an average of only 10.8 starts for the sample.
• They have better career outcomes. 7 of the 10 #1 picks in this sample earned significant 2nd contracts to be starting QBs, with the verdict still out on 2023 pick Bryce Young. Only 8 of 19 drafted 2-10 hit the same threshold (I am assuming CJ Stroud will as one of those 8), with the verdict still out on Anthony Richardson.

QBs are by far the most valuable players in the NFL, and so any QB who is widely regarded as a top-level prospect is going to get drafted #1 overall. Accordingly, I want to compare Williams directly to his peers, not to others who might get drafted highly out of desperation.

Rookie performance

With that setup in mind, let’s take a look at how these 10 QBs fared as rookies. Full data can be seen here, but the average stat line for these players was 504 pass attempts, 60% completion, 6.7 yards/attempt, 17 TD, 13 INT, and an 80.2 passer rating.

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Traditionally, the Bear With Us podcast is a grounded, analysis-focused take on the Chicago Bears.

That’s great for the middle of the season, but right now it’s June. Theoretically we could always talk more about OTAs, or maybe talk about the Haason Reddick and Aaron Rodgers drama, but now that we’re into the dead of the offseason I had a better idea — for one week, Nick and I allowed ourselves to be as recklessly positive as we felt like. The episode that resulted is an absolute firecracker.

Tune into this week’s episode for:

• My theory on how the Bears may be coincidentally positioned to catch the NFL in a 2-3 year downswing
• Nick’s theory on Caleb Williams’ potential 2024 season results
• A short discussion on whether Rome Odunze will end his career holding Chicago’s career WR yardage record… as well as whether he’ll be the first current Bear to claim it
• And much, much more…

Your Turn: How are you feeling about the 2024 Chicago Bears?

This is the final installment of a 3-part series looking at Chicago’s 2023 pass rush.

• In part one, we learned that the Bears had one of the worst pass rushes in the NFL, though it improved a bit after trading for Montez Sweat, especially when they were willing to blitz.
• In part two, we saw that Montez Sweat is a good but not great pass rusher, while all of the other defensive ends on the roster are bad at rushing the passer.

Today, we’re going to end the series by exploring Chicago’s defensive tackles.

Overall Efficiency

We’ll start with a season-long look at how Chicago’s main defensive tackles performed when rushing the passer. The table below shows a variety of per-snap metrics, including how they ranked compared to the 98 DTs league-wide who had at least 200 pass rush snaps. A few quick notes:

• All data comes from Pro Football Focus (PFF).
• Win rate is the percentage of snaps where PFF determines that the rusher has beaten the blocker at any point in the snap. This is admittedly subjective, and thus should not be used on its own, but can be a helpful part of a larger picture.
• Pass Rush Productivity is a unique PFF stat that accounts for all sacks, QB hits, and pressures on a per-snap basis, with an added weight given to sacks; a higher value is better.
• True pass sets look only at plays that do not give offensive linemen a built in advantage: no play action, no screens, and the throw time has to be at least 2 seconds. This lets us see how effectively a player rushes the passer when they most likely know they are getting after the QB, and the offense knows they have to block for a while.
• Values in the top 25% are highlighted in green, while those in the bottom 25% are highlighted in red.

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This is the 2nd installment of a 3-part series looking at Chicago’s pass rush from 2023. In part one, we learned that the overall team pass rush was among the worst in the NFL.

Today, we’ll be examining how effectively Chicago’s defensive ends rushed the passer last year.

Overall Efficiency

We’ll start with a season-long look at how Chicago’s main defensive ends performed when rushing the passer. The table below shows a variety of per-snap metrics, including how they ranked compared to the 95 edge rushers league-wide who had at least 200 pass rush snaps. A few quick notes:

• All data comes from Pro Football Focus (PFF).
• Data for Montez Sweat is only for the 9 games he played in Chicago.
• Win rate is the percentage of snaps where PFF determines that the rusher has beaten the blocker at any point in the snap. This is admittedly subjective, and thus should not be used on its own, but can be a helpful part of a larger picture.
• Pass Rush Productivity is a unique PFF stat that accounts for all sacks, QB hits, and pressures on a per-snap basis, with an added weight given to sacks; a higher value is better.
• True pass sets look only at plays that do not give offensive linemen a built in advantage: no play action, no screens, and the throw time has to be at least 2 seconds. This lets us see how effectively a player rushes the passer when they most likely know they are getting after the QB, and the offense knows they have to block for a while.
• Values in the top 25% are highlighted in green, while those in the bottom 25% are highlighted in red.

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This is the start of a 3-part series examining Chicago’s pass rush in 2023 and what expectations should be for 2024. The content covered in each part roughly breaks down as follows:

Part 1: Overall team pass rush, and the impact of trading for Montez Sweat.
Part 2: Defensive end individual pass rushing efficiency.
Part 3: Defensive tackle individual pass rushing efficiency, including rookie progression for Gervon Dexter Sr. and Zacch Pickens.

Let’s dive right in!

Overall results

We’ll start by examining Chicago’s overall team performance rushing the passer last year. The table below shows how the Bears ranked out of 32 NFL teams in generating sacks and pressures, as well as how often they blitzed. All values in the top 25% are highlighted in green, while those in the bottom 25% are in red. All data for this article, unless otherwise noted, is from Pro Football Reference.

Side note: sorry if the tables don’t show up well in the article. You can click on them to view in full on a separate page. 

A few thoughts:

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For some reason Twitter embeds still aren’t working today, so I’m literally framing yesterday’s highlight clips as if they’re a Jeff haiku.

Nice throw to Cole Kmet…

…Jumping throw to the checkdown…

…OTAs are fun.

Due to JW’s (fabulous) series from last week, we left a Bear With Us episode off the site.

If you’re looking for content today, Nick & I predicted the 2024 Bears’ record by reviewing the schedule game by game. Check it out below!

Your Turn: What do you think the Bears’ record will be in 2024?

This is the final installment of a 4-part series looking at Chicago TEs Cole Kmet and Gerald Everett.

• In part one, we explored how each player has been used in the past, and how this might match up with how offensive coordinator Shane Waldron has deployed his tight ends.
• In part two, we examined how frequently and effectively Kmet and Everett were asked to block in both the run and pass games.
• In part three, we saw how they fared as pass catchers in terms of overall efficiency, against man and zone coverage, and in different depths of the field.

Today we’ll wrap up the series by continuing to focus on their impact catching the football, especially on 3rd/4th down, in the red zone, and out of the slot.

3rd + 4th Down

Let’s start by looking at 3rd and 4th down, when stakes are high and players need to produce a first down to move the chains and avoid a punt. The table below shows how frequently and effectively Kmet and Everett were targeted in these high-leverage situations in 2023. Data is from Pro Football Reference’s Game Play Finder, ranks in parentheses are compared to the 26 NFL TEs with 50 or more targets, and ranks in the top 25% are highlighted in green, while those in the bottom 25% are highlighted in red.

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This is part 3 of a 4-part series looking at Chicago TEs Cole Kmet and Gerald Everett.

• In part one, we explored how each player has been used in the past, and how this might match up with how offensive coordinator Shane Waldron has deployed his tight ends.
• In part two, we examined how frequently and effectively Kmet and Everett were asked to block in both the run and pass games.

Today, we’re going to switch gears to focus on the tight ends as pass catchers. We’ll look at overall efficiency, how they performed against zone and man coverage, and how frequently and effectively they were targeted at different depths of the field.

Basic Efficiency Stats

We saw in part 1 that Kmet and Everett both have starting TE volume in the passing game, but volume stats don’t tell you the whole story; we also need to look at how efficient players are with their targets. The table below shows that data for Chicago’s TEs, as well as their ranks compared to 26 TEs with at least 50 targets. Values in the top 25% are highlighted in green, while those in the bottom 25% are in red. NFL best, average, and worst values among those 26 players are also included to help contextualize the data. All data is pulled from Pro Football Reference’s Game Play Finder.

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