As Chicago’s roster takes shape after what was thought to be a monumental offseason, it’s becoming clear who may or may not be key parts of the team going forward, despite what was previously believed. Here are three winners and three losers of the 2023 offseason.

Winners

Justin Fields

Fields has to make this list because the team announced with authority that Fields is The Guy.

Even after last season, it was fair to question if the Bears viewed Fields as the quarterback they wanted moving forward. (If we all acknowledge the moves Poles made this offseason show the team’s commitment to Fields, then we must also acknowledge that the moves Poles made last year showed uncertainty about the young quarterback.) The Bears did their homework on the quarterbacks in the draft — a decent group — and instead decided to stick with Fields, knowing they almost certainly wouldn’t be in position to draft a replacement next year.

Poles added a top-20 wide receiver and replaced the entire right side of the offensive line. He signed a free agent running back and drafted another; added a wide receiver in the draft and signed a tight end who has been a productive player in the NFL.

Fields is the guy, now he has to reward the faith.

Teven Jenkins

Jenkins might have to fight for his job but there’s no question he will enter training camp as the favorite to start at left guard. Many expected the Bears to spend a Day Two pick on either a center or a guard. Instead, the team didn’t draft a single interior offensive lineman. That means Jenkins is penciled in at left guard with Cody Whitehair shifting to center and Lucas Patrick backing both of them up.

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In part one, we found that the Bears actually had a respectable pass rush for the first part of the year, but trading Robert Quinn had a profound impact, leaving them with the worst pass rush of any NFL team in the last five years post-trade. Since their pass rush after the trade was so bad, it stands to reason that they need a whole host of new pass rushers. To figure that out a little more clearly, let’s start by looking at who they have returning from last year.

Individual pass rush data is going to come from Pro Football Focus (PFF). They track pressures quite differently than Pro Football Reference, but I think the data is of better quality, so I’m going to use it. PFF doesn’t provide team-wide data, so that is why I used Pro Football Reference data in part one.

What They Have

The Bears had three defensive ends who played meaningful snaps in 2022, and all but the recently cut Al-Quadin Muhammad are under contract for 2023. The table below shows how they performed in a variety of per-snap metrics, including how they ranked compared to the 117 edge rushers league-wide who had at least 150 pass rush snaps. (Side note: 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.) Values in the top 25% are highlighted in green, while those in the bottom 25% are highlighted in red.

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Five Things I Think Will Happen:

• The Bears will continue their offensive progression, and this week Chase Claypool will be a big reason why.  Claypool is a big-bodied receiver who can operate over the middle of the field, but lives on the barrier. He certainly won’t be able to operate the full playbook but I expect the Bears to use him enough to excite their fans.
• Tyreek Hill won’t get the Bears deep. Jaylen Waddle will dominate them underneath. Matt Eberflus will sit Eddie Jackson in centerfield and Jackson will pick off Tua early. After that the Miami quarterback will pepper short crosses to Waddle and Waddle’s speed/YAC will wreak havoc on the Bears. 11 catches. 141 yards. 2 touchdowns.
• This is a good Dolphins run defense. And the Bears will still eclipse 150 yards rushing.
• It won’t quite be “The Trevis Gipson Game” but he will swarm Tua’s blindside consistently and create a game-changing sack fumble in the fourth quarter.
• Cairo Santos makes a 51-yard field goal as the clock expires.

Chicago Bears 29, Miami Dolphins 27

There are only two scenarios wherein playing on a short week can be beneficial for a team involved: (a) when a team has delivered a terrible performance it needs to put in the rearview mirror, and (b) when a team has started to gain momentum and needs to build off of that. The latter is most certainly true for the Chicago Bears as, for the first time all season, it appeared as if they were running a competent offense last Sunday.

The Bears seemed to spread the field out more last week, possibly a significant reason Justin Fields looked more comfortable. The young quarterback has played in a spread his entire life and the 2022 Bears have been using tight formations, congesting the field. Spread attacks make it easier for quarterbacks to see the field; it’s the very reason the spread became so popular. If they stay in those looks, fans have every reason to believe Fields will continue his progress.

Regardless of the reason, the Bears had a good thing going and they get to march right back out and build on it. If they can, they’ll get a long break to try and figure out how to go from competent to good. But right now, competent feels like a relief.

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If you are hoping, for the first time in your life, to see a Chicago Bears team air it out, the 2022 edition is unlikely to fulfill those desires. But there does exist an offensive recipe for this vintage to succeed and it was almost on full display Sunday. The defense will fly to the football. The offense will generate big plays in the passing game. The Bears will run it a ton. They did two of three successfully against San Francisco and laid the groundwork for the rest of the season, monsoon or not.

With a defensive head coach, the defense is probably going to remain the straw that stirs the drink. While that may bring a collective groan from Bears fans, it shouldn’t. If they can run the ball and Justin Fields can keep making big plays, they will be competitive each week. But perhaps the most interesting part of the postgame reaction, though, was Matt Eberflus saying flat out that the team needs to be better.

There were a number of blown coverages that Aaron Rodgers is going to take advantage of in Week Two, assuming his receivers catch the football.

Fields put the team on his back at times, but he also had one horrible interception and barely avoided a couple more – including on his first pass attempt of the game, a screen in which the ball was thrown high with several Niner defenders closing in. He has to learn from those mistakes in a way past young Bears quarterbacks haven’t.

While it was Flus’ first win, the coach wasn’t puffing a victory cigar. He has an eye on next week and the future of the team. We’ll see what’s cooking for the rest of 2022. The recipe looks simple enough.

Herbert v. Montgomery

The hottest take to come from Sunday’s game was that Khalil Herbert is better than David Montgomery. That is a conversation that has more layers than their yards per carry averages though.

There is no question that Herbert was better running with the ball on Sunday. He was decisive and got whatever yardage was available. Montgomery seemed to have a difficult time finding the line of scrimmage at times.

But there is another factor. While NFL GSIS shows Herbert as having the most positive influence on the Bears running game, he was the biggest negative in the passing game. Herbert’s struggles in that regard aren’t just about catching passes. He has also had issues as a blocker.

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This is one of the more interesting seasons in recent memory, with the summer injecting unexpected optimism into the whole affair. So, what do I expect from the 2022 Chicago Bears?

Prediction #1. The Bears will beat their over/under number of six.

On the 2022 schedule: Giants, Jets, Texans, Commanders, Lions (twice), Falcons. Every one of those games is winnable and none of them will feature a point spread outside the 3-point margin. If Eberflus has the defense playing at a top-15 level, and he should, all of those teams are going to struggle to score on the Bears.

This is not to say the Bears will win double-digit games. But 7-10? 8-9? Even 9-8? All three seem perfectly feasible. And a side note to the prediction: this will be an inherently fun team to watch.

Prediction #2. The “starting five” will not be the “final five” along the offensive line.

Someone will flop. Braxton Jones at left tackle? Teven Jenkins at right guard? Larry Borom at right tackle? It is highly unlikely all three will find success and the Bears will have solved their offensive line woes in one off-season. Add in the waiver claim for Alex Leatherwood, with the cost associated, and it’s not hard to imagine a scenario where Chris Morgan and Luke Getsy work him into the starting lineup by mid-season.

Prediction #3. The Bears will struggle to rush the passer.

The last time Robert Quinn mounted back-to-back double-digit sack seasons was 2013-14. That is eight years ago. Quinn is capable of being an elite pass rusher (see: 2021), but his career has been defined by inconsistency rather than dominance. He’ll need help on the outside and help is not on this roster unless Trevis Gipson takes a massive leap in his third season. What is more likely is the Bears are debating between pass rusher and wide receiver in the first round of the 2023 NFL Draft.

Prediction #4. Cole Kmet will score five or more touchdowns.

Rookie season: 28-243-2

Sophomore season: 60-612-0

Third season: 78-1,008-6

Kmet’s lack of touchdown production in his second year had nothing to do with him. It was entirely about the previously regime’s Jimmy Graham obsession. Graham wasn’t just playing a majority of red zone snaps but was also in Graham-specific packages that included fade routes thrown by an inaccurate quarterback to an old tight end.

With attention being paid weekly to Darnell Mooney, Kmet should be the beneficiary of mismatches over the middle and profit greatly from a red zone scheme that will work to get him open for easy scores.

Prediction #5. Justin Fields will have a breakout season.

I’m not going to get into the numbers game because the numbers are not important. A singular conclusion will be reached by the end of the 2022 campaign: Fields is the franchise quarterback the Bears have been desperate to find.

Wrapping up our look at returning players and new veterans on defense, today we’re going to explore stopping the run.

This can be difficult to quantify, because much of what goes into run stopping doesn’t get measured. When Eddie Goldman holds his own against two blockers, he frees up a linebacker to make the tackle, but nothing Goldman did there shows up on a stat sheet. So I want to be clear from the start that this is not going to be a perfect science, and I make no claims that it is.

However, Pro Football Focus (PFF) does track some data that can give us an idea of how often a defender is directly involved in stopping a run play. We’ll look at basic metrics that are fairly self-explanatory, like how often a player makes a run tackle or misses a tackle, but also some more advanced data including how far downfield the average run tackle they make is.

One unconventional stat PFF uses that I want to briefly discuss is a “run stop.” PFF defines this as a solo tackle that counts as a “win” for the defense. I can’t find anything definitively saying what makes a play a “win,” but you can imagine this is probably similar to success rate, where it keeps the offense from picking up a certain % of the yards needed for a 1st down. In other words: a defender made a tackle to keep the run short and force the offense behind the chains.

I will examine every Bears defender who had at least 200 run defense snaps last year, whether in Chicago or somewhere else. This allows for a large enough individual sample size that the values have some meaning, but also a large enough sample size for comparing players from a position to their peers. The 200 snap threshold gave a sample of 74 interior defensive linemen (2.3/team), 52 edge defenders (1.6/team), 66 linebackers (2.1/team), 75 cornerbacks (2.3/team), and 70 safeties (2.2/team). That adds up to 10.5 defenders/team, or roughly those who played starter-level snaps.

Interior DL

Let’s start with a look at the defensive line, where the Bears return Angelo Blackson and added Justin Jones in free agency. The table below shows how they both fared in a variety of run-stopping metrics last year, as well as their rank compared to 74 interior defensive linemen who played at least 200 run snaps. To give a broader frame of reference, the best, average, median, and worst values among that 74-player sample are also provided for each statistics. Categories highlighted in green indicated the player was in the top 25% relative to their peers, while red indicates the player was in the bottom 25%.

A few thoughts:

• Angelo Blackson seems like a decent enough, if not great, run defender. He’s not overly good or bad in any of the areas. His missed tackle rate is a little higher than you would like to see, so hopefully that can improve a bit going forward.
• Justin Jones is very active in run defense, as evidenced by his high amount of run-defending tackles. However, he struggles with missed tackles, and very few of his tackles count as “wins” for the defense, which means they’re happening farther down the field than you would like.

Edge Rushers

Let’s switch gears and examine the edge rushers now, where the Bears have three notable players: returnees Robert Quinn and Trevis Gipson and newly signed Al-Quadin Muhammad. The table below shows their performance against the run in a variety of metrics, including their rank compared to 52 positional peers.

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Almost everything I’ve looked at so far this offseason has been about the offense, so now I want to shift gears and give some attention to returning players and new veterans on defense. That starts today with a closer examination of the pass rush.

In order to do this, I’m using data from Pro Football Focus (PFF) that examine pressures, wins, sacks, and pass rush productivity. Here’s a quick explainer of what PFF means by some of those that are less obvious:

• Pressure: This is a measure of how often a player bothers the QB – makes him move off his spot, hits him, or sacks him.  It will be defined through the % of pass-rushing snaps that count as a pressure, QB hit, or sack.
• Win: this is a measure of how often a player beats their block to impact a play within 2.5 seconds. It will be defined through the % of pass-rushing snaps that count as a win.
• Pass Rush Productivity: this accounts for all sacks, pressures, and QB hits on a per-snap basis, with an added weight given to sacks. PFF doesn’t give an exact formula for how much extra sacks are weighted, but generally a higher number is better.

I’ll examine both all pass rushing snaps and only what PFF defines as true pass sets. These are basically set up to only look at 4-man rushes on standard passing plays, so all screens, play action, designed rollouts, blitzes, 3-man rushes, and exceptionally fast (ball thrown in <2 seconds) or slow (ball thrown in >4 seconds) plays are removed. PFF says that these values tend to be more stable year-to-year, since they are more indicative of actual pass rushing ability.

Edge Rushers

Let’s start by examining edge rushers, where the Bears have three notable NFL veterans: returners Robert Quinn and Trevis Gipson and newly signed Al-Quadin Muhammad.

The table below shows how all three fared in a variety of pass rushing stats in 2021, as well as their rank compared to 93 NFL edge rushers with at least 200 pass rush opportunities. To give a broader frame of reference, the best, average, median, and worst values among that 93-player sample are also provided for each statistic.

Categories highlighted in green indicated the player was in the top 25% of edge rushers (top 23), while red indicates the player was in the bottom 25% (bottom 23).

A few thoughts:

• If you ignore sacks and look more at the pressure and win rates – which are more stable season to season – Quinn was more good than great as a pass rusher in 2021. That feels weird to say for somebody who finished 2nd in the NFL in sacks, but the extremely low pressure/sack ratio tells us that he produced more sacks than expected based on the pressure he generated, and pressures are generally more consistent than sacks.
  • This tracks with other data showing that Quinn generally took longer to get to the QB than the NFL’s elite pass rushers.
  • Quinn also has a fairly established track record of season-to-season inconsistency. He’s never produced an above-average pass rush productivity ranking in two consecutive years during his career, and he hasn’t had back-to-back seasons with 8+ sacks since 2014.
  • Add it all up, and I think a regression from Quinn is highly likely in 2022. The Bears would be wise to sell high on him now rather than waiting for the trade deadline if they are hoping to get value in return.
• Trevis Gipson honestly was fairly comparable to Robert Quinn in most of these statistics, which is pretty impressive. He had a very solid year in 2021. His sample size was much smaller (229 pass rush snaps vs. 402 for Quinn), so I’m eager to see if he can repeat that performance. It’s worth noting, however, that his pressure/sack ratio was about as low as Quinn’s, so he could play better this year and still see a dip in sacks.
• Al-Quadin Muhammad is a bad pass rusher. I really hope the Bears aren’t planning on him doing much to bother the QB, because 2021 was actually the best season rushing the passer of his career, and it was still bad.

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The Bears were significant underdogs in Las Vegas. And they won the game by double digits. There is plenty to criticize about this performance. (And you’ll find much of that below.) But one thing can not be stated clearly enough: this was a massive win for the 2021 Chicago Bears and their head coach, Matt Nagy. They now have a chance for a season.

Rapid fire.

• Everything starts with Justin Fields and he was getting annihilated early. And most of it was NOT the result of poor play on the offensive line. The Raiders came into Sunday with the clear directive to hit Fields, whether the play was alive or dead. And Fields almost didn’t survive it.
  • As brutal as the hit was later in the game, don’t think for a moment those early hits didn’t play into Roquan Smith’s mindset when he knocked Derek Carr from the game. That was a teammate having the back of another teammate. You hit my guy up top, I hit yours up top. That’s how football used to be played.
• Fields was good in this game, but the Bears have to let him do more moving forward. At several moments late, Nagy could have told his quarterback, “Make a play here and the it’s over.” He didn’t Sunday. He will have to soon.
  • I would have loved to see a replay of Fields’ touchdown pass to Jesper Horsted from any angle but the one shown on TV. (Apparently the only camera working at the time was on the other side of the field.) It looked like a bold decision, perfectly executed.
  • The Fields-to-Mooney 3rd down toss on what ultimately became the game-sealing drive was an absolute thing of beauty. If Fields can make that throw, in that moment, there’s nothing he can’t do physically out there.
• As for Roquan, what a performance. He broke up a touchdown in the end zone. He stopped Carr on what looked like an easy first down run on a pivotal third down in the first half. And he’s called for two big penalties – a PI and an unnecessary roughness – neither of which were actually penalties. In the modern NFL, teams need to be wary when paying inside linebackers. The Bears should hand him a blank check.
• There’s very little left to say about Khalil Mack. The Raiders tried to hold him early but the refs called it. Then they tried to double, and sometimes triple him. He beat it all. Some days he’s unblockable. Quite frankly, there aren’t enough of those days. But Sunday was one of them.

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Myles Garrett.

Chandler Jones.

Danielle Hunter.

Justin Hargrave.

TJ Watt.

Those are the only five players with more sacks on this early season than Robert Quinn, the early frontrunner for Comeback Player of the Year in the NFL. (Being that he “played” most of 2020, he’s probably not even eligible for the award but symbolically the point is made.) A second look at the players above Quinn reveals an even more significant truth.

Garrett has 6 sacks, but recorded 4.5 in a single game, against the Chicago Bears. Jones has 5 sacks, all coming in the season opener against the Tennessee Titans. Hunter had 3 of his 5 against the Arizona Cardinals.

Only Hargrave, Watt, and Robert Quinn have delivered as pass rushers in each of the first four games of the 2021 season. They have been the most consistent performers off the edge, with Quinn’s teammate Khalil Mack a half-sack behind and right there in the same conversation. But Quinn’s appearance on this list is something of a revelation, and a shocking revelation at that. Let’s follow the timeline.

• March 2020. Bears sign Quinn to a 5-year, $70 million contract. After years of Leonard Floyd failing to fulfill his pass rush promise, the Bears had seemingly solved the issue opposite Mack.
• May 2020. Quinn is already dealing with injury issues. (Folks forget how early the injury word began trickling out of Halas Hall.) Was it his back? His hip? Why wouldn’t anyone say definitively?
• Camp 2020. Quinn is nowhere to be found. He never practiced, never appeared in the preseason and things seemed to be pointing in consistently bad directions for his season.
• Season 2020. Useless, and it is coupled with that fact that Leonard Floyd’s 9-sack performance in Los Angeles. Ryan Pace takes the majority of the criticism.
• December 2020. Brad Biggs cracks the code, finally reporting that Quinn is suffering from something called “drop foot”. The article landed me on the Mayo Clinic’s website, learning that “Foot drop, sometimes called drop foot, is a general term for difficulty lifting the front part of the foot. If you have foot drop, the front of your foot might drag on the ground when you walk..”

Now, through four games of the 2021 season, Quinn has 4.5 sacks and could easily have 2-3 more. He’s well on his way to the double-digit sack campaign the Bears paid him to reach. But from a gameday perspective, Quinn’s reemergence is going to allow the Bears to stay competitive in at least 75% of the games they play this season. With a secondary comprised of Jaylon Johnson, a mediocre Eddie Jackson and a bunch of street guys, the only hope for this defense is a multidimensional pass rush and Quinn is finally providing that needed second dimension opposite Mack.

This will also allow the Bears to start Justin Fields without him needing to throw 50 passes a game to stay competitive; a completely untenable situation with the offensive line as currently composed.

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