A new head coach, a young, talented team and several well-known newcomers – for many experts, the Chicago Bears are among the teams to watch 2018. But is that enough to celebrate success in the coming season?
Aggressiveness and willingness to take risks in the offseason do not always pay off in the NFL. The Green Bay Packers, the Baltimore Ravens or others – some of the most successful teams of this millennium can largely attribute their success to not advertising the biggest stars and wagging the tickets. Too often teams get stuck on bad contracts. Too rarely do rookies get the chance to prove themselves.
However, two teams showed impressively in the past season alone that things can be different. The Jacksonville Jaguars secured the Free Agency with Calais Campbell, AJ Bouye and Barry Church three well-known (and correspondingly expensive) players and catapulted themselves into the AFC Championship game thanks to their dominant defense. The Los Angeles Rams invested brutally in their offense: Andrew Whitworth, Sammy Watkins, Robert Woods, Cooper Kupp and Gerald Everett all came to Los Angeles to give head coach Sean McVay the offense he had in mind during his debut season. It was a complete success.
The Chicago Bears are now hoping for similar success, or at least a step in this direction, from this strategy this year. Especially the rams can serve as a parallel. As in Los Angeles, a young coach who is considered an offensive genius and has made a name for himself as a play caller for one of the best offenses of the NFL is the greatest source of hope in Chicago: Matt Nagy.
A quasi foster son of chiefs-head coach Andy Reid, Nagy embodies the modern NFL like few others. Last season he turned notoriously risk-averse Alex Smith into a downfield passing machine. After eleven games he even took over Reid’s playcalling duties and led Kansas City to a respectable 4-1 season end.
Bill Walsh, Paul Brown and the Present: Play-Calling explains
Nagy relies heavily on elements from the West Coast Offense, but repeatedly combines horizontal and vertical route combinations. It also impresses with its great creativity and variety, so that numerous plays can be played from different formations. It can be assumed that Nagy will bring many parts of his bag of tricks from Kansas City to Windy City. That means: Jet Sweeps, Shovel Passes and – of course – Run-Pass-Options.
First beneficiary of these changes will be quarterback Mitchell Trubisky. The 23-year-old played an acceptable but not spectacular debut season last year, but also suffered noticeably from the conservative play calling of head coach John Fox. While Trubisky shone exclusively from the shotgun in college (98 percent of all snaps), Fox let him take half of his snaps under center. With this figure, Chicago were 13 percent above the league average.
Nagy wants to focus the offense more on the qualities of his quarterback. “I have the feeling that many more people are already listening to him (Trubisky),” betrays Running Back Jordan Howard. “He has a lot more to say in the locker room, because now it’s certain he’s our quarterback.” Newcomer Trey Burton also has great confidence in Trubisky: “He is extraordinary. It belongs in the same category as (Eagles-QB) Carson (Wentz). He has impressed me very much so far.”
Tight End Burton is one of the weapons that Nagy and the Bears were determined to make available to their young quarterback. Sensibly so. Chicago traded upstairs in the 2017 draft especially to have his dream quarterback safe. Now they should do everything to support the new face of the franchise in its development in the best possible way.
Wide Receiver Allen Robinson also falls into this category. The 24-year-old signed a three-year contract for 42 million dollars and is finally supposed to give Trubisky the clear number-one receiver, which he missed so painfully in part last season.
As a large, physical receiver, Robinson fulfils the profile of the X receiver in the West Coast Offense, which can win in isolation on its side of the field one-on-one matchups, almost in its entirety. But above all as a downfield goal it could become particularly dangerous in interaction with Trubisky.
In 2015, Robinson’s strongest season by far, he led the NFL with 672 deep receiving yards. Especially with go routes there is hardly a more dangerous receiver. With a register rating of 108.1, Trubisky was already one of the three best quarterbacks at Deep Passes (at least 20 yards) last season, so the combination with his new top receiver should cause some defensive coordinators headaches.
With Robinson, Burton, Free Agent Taylor Gabriel, second-round pick Anthony Miller, tight end Adam Shaheen and the highly explosive Tarik Cohen, Chicago will have an arsenal of weapons in the passing game next season that is as different from that of the pre-season as the night of day. The stuttering Passing-Offense, which occupied 27th place in the league last year, should therefore be history from now on.
While the focus in the offense was on a radical renewal of both coach and player personnel, the Bears in the defense primarily hope for consistency and further development. Last season Chicago were already among the best teams against the run and were at least in the top half of the league against the pass. The fact that defensive coordinator Vic Fangio will remain with the team despite the change of head coaching is therefore a clear advantage.
The young players in Fango’s Defense are set to take the next step in their development in 2018, with high performers such as Leonard Floyd and Danny Trevathan spared injuries. Then many in the Windy City actually see the potential to be among the best defenses of the league in the coming season.
First-Round-Pick Roquan Smith plays a key role here. The 21-year-old impresses with an almost unbelievable explosiveness and speed. As a Sideline-to-Sideline-Linebacker, Smith is to become a tackling machine for the Bears – in both run and pass defense. With Lavonte David and Telvin Smith, similar types of players have just won Pro Bowl and All Pro honours, so many see Roquan Smith as the clear favourite for the title of the Defensive Rookie of the Year.
For the first time in years, the franchise actually surrounds a (justified) mood of departure. As promising as the team currently looks on paper, however, so many question marks remain. Can Trubisky meet the significantly increased expectations? How does the offensive line compensate for the loss of Guard Josh Sitton? After his severe cruciate ligament injury, is Robinson really going to be the old one again?
If the Bears are spared from injury in the coming season, unlike 2016 and 2017, the fans in Chicago can expect some entertaining games. It remains to be seen to what extent these can be crowned with immediate success in the heavily occupied NFC North, but after years of tribulation the supporters will probably still have a little patience if the curve at least points upwards.
The first step in the right direction was taken by the franchise in the offseason. During the season it is now important to continue along this path. Then Chicago’s aggressiveness and willingness to take risks should actually pay off.