Bear Digest

Tangible Bears Defensive Improvement Draws Skepticism

All the numbers and on-field production point to a Bears defense light years ahead of the start of last season but some doubters call it a mirage.

Gene Chamberlain

Tyrique Stevenson comes up with the interception against Detroit last season, one of five the Bears had in two games against Jared Goff.
Tyrique Stevenson comes up with the interception against Detroit last season, one of five the Bears had in two games against Jared Goff. / Lon Horwedel-USA TODAY Sports
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The excitement builds over the Bears offense with a new quarterback and receiver, while their defense almost seems to be assumed.

Matt Eberflus' defense improved drastically by season's end in 2023 and kept them in games or let them win.

The need for a quarterback was an obvious one and getting a receiver as good as Rome Odunze at No. 9 seemed a coup but some concern exits over how they virtually ignored defensive in the draft.

After all, they decided against defensive help at No. 75 to draft tackle Kiran Amegadjie, then even igored it in Round 4 with punter Tory Taylor.

Ignoring Defense at What Cost?

ESPN analyst Tim Hasselbeck criticized the Bears draft for not paying attention on defense until the Round 5 selection of Austin Booker at defensive end.

"I thought they didn't have enough playmakers on the defensive side of the ball," Hasselbeck said. "I think that was a bigger issue for them than what was happening offnsively. So i would say that was the bigger issue. Now, obviously they wanted the reset at quarterback."

There is reason for concern on defense. They wanted to help out Montez Sweat in the pass rush but adding a fifth-round rookie didn't help with Dominique Robinson in 2022.

The other reason for concern is the loss of defensive tackle Justin Jones as the 3-technique. They'll apparently replace him with Gervon Dexter but it's a big leap of faith considering Dexter's poor Pro Football Focus grades against the run.

There is even some concern their second-half defensive improvement might have been a mirage, that it came against struggling offenses or poor quarterbacks.

What this all misses is the fact they couldn't even stop bad offenses and bad quarterbacks early.

Discounting Bears defensive improvement last year is ignoring fact or distorting it.

The defense destroyed Jared Goff in two meetings and should have had two wins against him instead of one, if not for a late collapse at Detroit.

Goff threw for the second-most yards, had the ninth-best quarterback rating, the seventh-best yards per attempt

 and completion percentage. Yet the Bears held him to passer ratings of 54.6 and 68.3 in the games with five interceptions and three touchdowns. He had 61.4% completions and was held to 5.67 yards per attempt.

No defense would turn down stats like that against one of the league's best passers.

At the time they faced Joe Flacco, he was one of the hottest passers in the leaugue en route to comeback player of the year honors. They held him to a 77.3 passer rating with three interceptions to two TD passes.

WHERE RYAN POLES LEFT THE BEARS NEEDING DEPTH HELP

WHAT BEAR SEE CALEB WILLIAMS DOING THAT JUSTIN FIELDS COULDN'T

CALEB WILLIAMS' DAY OFF AT WRIGLEY

HOW SECOND WAVE OF ANALYSIS RATES BEARS DRAFT

NO NEW CONTRACT FOR MATT EBERFLUS BUT AT LEAST HE HAS THIS

At the time they faced Joshua Dobbs, he was the talk of the league for the Vikings after replacing injured Kirk Cousins.

He came into the game with the Bears with a 96.3 passer rating in three straight starts, 726 yards, four TD passes and one interception and they picked him off four times. He had a 54.3 passer rating for that game.

Even in the finale when the Bears lost to Green Bay, the Packers scored 17 points. The Bears defense had no support from their feeble offense in that one. At some point, the defense needed some assistance in the form of points to keep pressure on Green Bay's defenes but didn't get it.

Turnaround Can't Be Denied

The obvious turning point for the Bears came when Montez Sweat was inserted. The first week against New Orleans, he had only a couple practices to get ready for that loss and their defense struggled. From then on, his impact in the rush and the impact it had on the rest of the pass rush was obvious.

Their secondary had been near the bottom of the league in passer rating against, but with better pressure they improved to be third-bet over the final nine games at 75.7.

They gave up 17.9 points a game in the last nine, sixth best.

They had 19 takeaways in those nine games, third most in the league.

There was evidence of improvement even before Sweat's arrival, though. It started with their run defense as they gave up only four rushing touchdowns in the final 14 games, lowest total in the league for that period.

The one thing that must be remembered about their early season defensive performance was they didn't have their defense together and it went beyond Sweat. Because of injuries and other issues, the entire starting defense never took the field together throughout training camp and preseason until the two weeks prior to the start of the regular-season opener. Then they had injuries immediately in the secondary. Eddie Jackson went out, Kyler Gordon went out, Jaquan Brisker was inijured.

When they lost to the Chargers badly, their starting safeties were Elijah Hicks and Duron Harmon. They picked Harmon up off the street for Week 5 and he was gone by Week 9 but had to start because of injuries to starters and backups.

Their entire secondary finally pulled back to full health by the second game they had Sweat.

There will be obvious concerns when they return to training camp. The edge rush, whether they can still stop the run with Jones gone from defensive tackle, and a pass rush in general are some of them.

The pass rush stil produced just 20 sacks for the last nine games, a healthy amount but not among the best in the league.

They haven't done enough to improve the defensive line and even cornerback Jaylon Johnson called them out on this last week.

Still, the progress accomplished can't be written off as a fluke when it came over a period of time as long as more than half the season and involved so many different statistical categories.

The NFC North will need to get used to the idea the Bears can play defense, that it was no fluke, and if they improved the offense, times have changed in Chicago.

Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

BearDigest.com publisher Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.