Bear Digest

Bears/Shanahan Offense About to Take Shape

Hiring Luke Getsy from Green Bay lets the Bears join a trend in the NFL to use the Shanahan style of offense with wide zone blocking and a chance to get Justin Fields out in the open more to throw.

Gene Chamberlain

USA Today
In this story:

With a new coaching regime comes another offensive system and hope the Bears could actually step up out of the bottom of the league in scoring.

Much depends on quarterback Justin Fields but also on the system new offensive coordinator Luke Getsy will use.

The Bears will likely join the popular NFL trend by using a version of the Shanahan style offense, the way Green Bay did in 2019.

The system started with Mike Shanahan and line coach Alex Gibbs extensively using a wide or outside-zone blocking scheme, and the attack was adopted by Shanahan's son Kyle. Sean McVay and the Rams have their own version, as do the Packers under coach Matt LaFleur.

There are several other variations now of this offense that really took off when McVay, Kyle Shanahan and LaFleur all were on the Washington Redskins coaching staff together early last decade.

What Won't Be Different

Although Matt Nagy has been fired, one particular aspect of the Chiefs offense he brought to Chicago could remain a large part of the new attack under coach Matt Eberflus.

Nagy loved run-pass option and it's unlikely to go away.

When the Bears settled on Luke Getsy as offensive coordinator, they brought in someone who has been working in a version of the Shanahan style offense using RPO more extensively than some others.

The Packers developed their own version of the offense and it included a great deal of RPO. When Green Bay made its big jump in scoring from 15th in 2019 to first in 2020, RPO was a key element. They managed to meld it with plenty of presnap motion like McVay's style of the Shanahan offense emphasizes.

According to Pro Football Focus, the Packers in that season ran the sixth-highest amount of presnap motion and they also ran the second highest amount of RPOs.

It's also safe to assume the RPOs will be a big part of the attack because it's a concept very familiar to Fields both from Ohio State and last year.

Another reason RPOs will remain big is Getsy spent 2018 as a college offensive coordinator calling plays at Mississippi State. "Air Raid" offenses are the rage in college and there is a major emphasis on RPOs in it. So Getsy has other influences besides just the Shanahan style.

Didn't Bears Do This Last Year

If some of this sounds like the offense the Bears had been running, it's true to an extent.

Nagy tried to adapt his offense with outside zone blocking late in the 2020 season with Mitchell Trubisky at quarterback and also when they benched Andy Dalton and went to Fields.

It's not easy to meld all these concepts into an offense on the fly, especially the outside zone run-blocking scheme which requires a cohesive unit.

The Bears had only marginal success at this. They ran well against poor defenses and rarely were able to run this blocking scheme effectively against good defenses, like Green Bay or New Orleans.

The key to how quickly they adapt could be their offensive line coaching hire.

Sports Illustrated's Connor Orr penned an article about the wide zone and one of the main points of the article is how difficult it is to teach because there just aren't enough good teachers of it to go around.

The wide zone sends linemen blocking horizontally and requires constant repetition to master because timing and footwork are so critical.

Browns offensive line great Joe Thomas was in Shanahan's offense and in an article by longtime Browns writer Tony Grossi he called it his favorite scheme to block.

It's not likely to produce immediate smashing success.

"Everybody's footwork has to be in unison," Thomas told Grossi. "When you watch a nice outside zone scheme, you're seeing everybody's foot hitting the ground at the same time with the same angle, and their pads and helmets are in the same perspective and position on their defender, their hands, their pad level. It just looks like five mirror images of each other."

When the wide zone and the Shanahan offense are all synched up, it can work wonders.

When It Works 

 The conference finals this year are good examples, as three of the four coaches came from that same coaching tree—McVay, Kyle Shanahan and Cincinnati's Zac Taylor.

Fields' speed and ability to throw on the run also make him a natural for this Shanahan style attack because there is a great deal of play-action, bootleg action and the quarterback always seems to be moving the launch point.

Fields should be able to get out in the open and see receivers downfield better.

"I liked it the most because the run and the pass in the play action all fit together and everything made perfect sense," Thomas was reported as saying of the wide zone scheme.

The Bears offense never seemed to make sense over the last four years as they tried to rely on Kansas City's attack emphasizing RPO and inside zone, but then also unsuccessfully tried adding other aspects.

Perhaps it can make sense with someone heading up the attack who has experience adapting to this blocking scheme the way Getsy has.

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.

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