It's Not the Second Time for These Bears
Matt Eberflus counts the importance of experience among his coaching beliefs.
"There's no teacher like experience," Eberflus said. "There just isn't. You can talk about it all you want."
It's the second year of applying his defense and Luke Getsy's offense. The Bears should be better the second time around.
"It's like anything," Eberflus said. "When you—when I became the defensive coordinator at Missouri and I was 29 years old, the second year was better than the first year. And it kept getting better and we kept adding talent. And the same thing when I became the coordinator at the Colts, same thing. You get more comfortable in the position. You know how to flex a little bit better. You're more comfortable with the coaches. The coaches are more comfortable with the players."
Eberflus isn't blindly turning an eye to the other great intangible affecting his team.
Safety Eddie Jackson, cornerback Jaylon Johnson, defensive tackle Justin Jones and cornerback Kyler Gordon did go through a year playing the Eberflus Cover-2. But they were the only starters who did.
"It's just the second time through it," Eberflus said. "But we also added a lot of players this year, too. So we’ve got a lot of new guys that are new to the system.
"The rookies are new to the system. All the guys that we acquired during the offseason are new to the system. We still have a lot of work to do."
It's likely to be the biggest question mark about the Bears on defense this year and one that became more and more apparent as offseason work wore on and players were fit in at roles they'll likely play when camp begins: Can the benefit of a second year in the scheme for a few players offset the numerous changes made to their starting lineup?
In some ways the Bears are back to 2022 all over again on defense. Seven of the players who appear likely to line up on their starting defense will not be going through a second time in the scheme at those positions.
When the Bears lined up at minicamp, they had three different defensive line starters than a year ago. They had three different starting linebackers. They had one new member of the secondary. Linebacker Tremaine Edmunds, defensive ends Rasheem Green and DeMarcus Walker, linebacker T.J. Edwards, cornerback Tyrique Stevenson and nose tackle Andrew Billings weren't in the defense last year. Neither was rookie linebacker Noah Sewell, who had the bulk of plays at strongside linebacker in the offseason. Jack Sanborn is going to begin training camp at the starting strongside linebacker spot, but he didn't play that position last year as a rookie and hasn't practiced due to injury this offseason.
This is but one major takeaway from watching Bears OTAs and minicamp. Here are the other defensive takeaways from an offseason of Bears work.
Edge Sharpening
Walker is an impressive leader and personality within the defensive line. It's uncertain yet what the Bears will get from Green, but both he and Walker are known more for being more stout against the run than as pass rushers.
The Bears need run defenders. That's fine. The Bears need this for two reasons: They were terrible stopping it last year and if they can defend the run better then they can put teams into obvious passing situations and make the pass rush easier for themselves.
Still, at some point, even if teams are passing in predictable situations, the Bears are going to need an actual legitimate edge rusher. They don't have that player among the top four edges right now. If Dominique Robinson suddenly developed into one, it would be a tremendous help, but that's asking an awful lot from a player who used to be a wide receiver. Trevis Gipson is a solid all-around type but expecting him to become the classic 4-3 edge coming off the blind side is a stretch.
You could almost hear Matt Eberflus wishing they had one for passing situations. In fact, he was audible about it.
"Yeah, I think they're always looking for all positions," Eberflus said. "You know I think that is one position (D-End) we are looking at and potentially we could get that done."
Best Laid Plans
The plan on defense is attacking the quarterback up the middle and making it easier for defensive ends, who apparently will need the help.
So the interior of the defense is critical in a few ways. They need to stop the run to force offenses into obvious passing situations. Defensive linemen in this scheme need to be in the gap and upfield making tackles for loss. Then they need to apply pass rush pressure from the center of the line.
Edmunds is very impressed with new nose tackle Billings, who is expected to help their run defense.
"Man, that's a big man, a big man for sure," Edmunds said. But it's a big man that can move. "Obviously, it's going to cause a lot of havoc up front. I'm excited to see him working. He's a true pro. A guy who's been around the league for a while, for years. His work speaks for itself."
Billings was graded the 16th best interior defender overall by Pro Football Focus last year, which is significant. He was right behind Dalvin Tomlinson and Calais Campbell. And he was also behind Khyiris Tonga, who Eberflus and Bears coaches gave away by cutting him before he wound up with Minnesota as a two-gap nose tackle.
Billings is in his sixth year, however, and hasn't had the kind of production in other years that he had last year. So there will be questions here.
Jones, on the other hand, made 12 tackles for loss and three sacks but was among four Bears defensive tackles last year who ranked in the bottom 25 of PFF's defensive tackle grades–and the website graded 127 defensive tackles.
Jones and Billings are backed up by two rookies, Grevon Dexter Jr. and Zacch Pickens. That's an interior defensive line with really huge question marks, even if it is a grouping greatly altered from last year.
Considering how critical the pass rush pressure and run-stopping ability from the interior is supposed to be, can the Bears be certain their plan will even work?
Alignment, Assignment...
Bears coaches stress this on defense, saying it over and over repeatedly. The last two words to their mantra are "technique and execution." At this point of the offseason when there are no pads and no contact, it's more just alignment and assignment work.
At the moment, it could be what lets Sanborn have a shot at taking the strongside linebacker spot from Sewell. Although Sewell made plays at various points in spring work, something difficult for anyone to know other than the Bears is whether he is lining up correctly and playing his assignment in the required way. Eberflus hinted this might not be the case yet.
"With rookies, it's always know what to do first, so he knows his assignment so he can do it fast," Eberflus said of Sewell. "He's getting better at it. We love his instincts. He's a very instinctual player. And so is Jack."
Sanborn didn't practice all offseason but if Sewell had known everything he needed to know and applied it correctly then it's difficult to see why Eberflus would still be talking about giving Sanborn a chance to keep the starting spot at training camp.
Sanborn hasn't played this position for the Bears on the strongside, so it would be easy to merely keep Sewell there and move on. But they're not, so apparently Sewell does have things to learn.
Safety Depth Exists
The question without DeAndre Houston-Carson returning to the team was whether they had an adequate third safety, because it came down to two young seventh-rounders or else two players they didn't draft–Adrian Colbert is with his sixth team in seven years and A.J. Thomas was an undrafted free agent.
The Bears didn't get through either of the last two years with starting safeties available for every game, so this could be an important position. Elijah Hicks was the obvious choice to move up to third safety but was relegated mostly to special teams last year. He was less than impressive for 168 defensive plays last season.
While learning, Hicks took special teams seriously, which was exactly what safeties coach Andre Curtis said he needed to do in his rookie season.
"You do some good things there, other opportunities will open up for you," Curtis had said.
Now, it does appear the other opportunity opened up because Hicks looked improved enough during OTAs that they kept him playing the third safety spot and he rarely let play get behind him while in the free safety position.
Route Jumper
Cornerback Tyrique Stevenson showed the Bears enough to get more and more first-team repetitions as the offseason went along. In fact, Kindle Vildor rarely appeared with starters after the second week of offseason work. Vildor has three years of experience but has been inconsistent.
It would be safe to consider Stevenson the starter already, but coaches won't say that yet out of respect to a veteran.
Eberflus lauded Stevenson's long arms and said one of his best qualities is tackling ability, but he hasn't even been able to show this yet. So it's not far-fetched to say this battle at starting left cornerback is already done.
Stevenson also showed a willingness to try for big plays by jumping routes in OTAs and minicamp. This was noted by none other than Justin Fields when he was describing why he threw a particular pass in red zone work for a TD in a rather flat manner between Jackson and Stevenson.
"That's why it was kind of a flat throw right there, because BoJack (Jackson) has seen our concepts," Fields said. "He knows. And Tyrique–we know he's going to jump those little out routes–so I was waiting for that one."
The Bears can definitely use a good route jumper.
They had Johnson covering passes well the last three years, but he didn't make interceptions. They haven't had enough big plays in the secondary, even if it can sometimes means taking a gamble and jumping a route.
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