Bear Digest

Now It's Matt Eberflus' Defensive Scheme Getting a Makeover

The Chicago Bears defense will get a bit of a makeover in coming days before the regular season, according to coach Matt Eberflus.

Gene Chamberlain

Matt Eberflus seems to be scheming up something for the rest of the league to think about and implementing it in practice against Caleb Williams in the next few weeks.
Matt Eberflus seems to be scheming up something for the rest of the league to think about and implementing it in practice against Caleb Williams in the next few weeks. / Gregory Fisher-USA TODAY Sports
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Bears coach Matt Eberflus has a defensive scheme often considered overly simplistic by critics, based upon seven men in coverage with the cover-2 zone.

Vanilla is often the term given the cover-2 style.

While talking about how he wants to prepare Caleb Williams at practice with his own defense over the next three weeks before the regular season, Eberflus on Tuesday revealed his defensive scheme will not be as easy for opposing quarterbacks to assess in the future. 

"We're going to give him different looks on defense with things we are putting in this season that we want on our menu board defensively," Eberflus said. "We're challenging our players right now to learn those."

The defensive menu is changing. While we all usually hate that at our favorite restaurants, it's good for the Bears because this is Year 3 in the scheme and by now the Packers are not the only team to have figured out what the Bears are going to be in defensively.

Eberflus, himself, underwent a highly publicized offseason makeover, one HBO's Hard Knocks focused on greatly in its first episode. Now it seems his defense gets a makeover.

It seems kind of late in the process for such changes, considering they had all offseason or training camp to do it. At least they're changing. Before now, Williams might not have benefited from seeing those different looks, anyway. But he apparently has advanced to the point where facing it in practice will help him.

"What you do is conceptually as an offense and defense and kicking is you put the concepts in, and it seems like a lot to the players and it is," Eberflus said. "But those are things you're going to pull of your menu board. It's not something that is brand new to the player. OK, this is this concept that we talked about Week 3 or Week 4 of training camp, and we're able to pluck those off to have multiplicity in your scheme."

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This is part of what Eberflus plans to have working over the next few weeks, as they gear up for Tennessee.

What are the changes?

Of course he's not going to reveal it, but it's possible they've already shown some against the Cincinnati Bengals on Saturday. The slot corner blitz by both Josh Blackwell and Kyler Gordon hit home and was not a staple for the Bears in the past, although Eberflus tried to say it was by bringing up a past Hall of Famer who did this. Ronde Barber did do this for Tampa Bay in the same scheme, but not for his teams' defenses.

Eberflus' defense has been notorious for its lack of blitzing over the years and last year the Bears were well down the list at 22.2% blitzes, according to figures Pro Football Reference uses from Sportradar. They were 21st in blitz percentage, which is good when your goal is always to plays seven men back in coverage.

However, this figure was inflated from the time they weren't getting home using four rush men, from back prior to the arrival of Montez Sweat. When he showed up, they could cut back on blitzing.

Now, if they do blitz they can do it when they want and disguising their looks only adds to the confusion for opposing offenses.

They were 25th at 18.2% blitzes in 2022, when the defense was hopelessly lost and near the bottom of the league all year after gutting the roster, including their trade of Roquan Smith.

The Bears had the lowest percentage of blitzes in their division the last two seasons. Last year they were nowhere near the other teams as all three of the other teams ranked in the top 11 in the league for blitz percentage. Eberflus' Colts teams never ranked higher than 23rd for blitz percentage and in his last two seasons there finished 29th.

This isn't necessarily bad, if a team has a front four rushing like the Fearsome Foursome or the Purple People Eaters. Then they can afford to sit back and play pass defense with linebackers and defensive backs, and gather in takeaways. The Bears didn't have this until Sweat arrived, but they still need a counterbalance in the rush to Sweat and haven't acquired one.

Apparently, though, blitzing, scheming and disguising can take on different forms and become more confusing for opposing quarterbacks by what Eberflus is planning.

It could all lead to more gambling and takeaways.

On the other hand, they might wind up with more breakdowns in their secondary and big plays by opponents.

But that's why they have Caleb Williams and a totally revamped passing attack of their own, and why they're getting him ready in these next three weeks by throwing different things at him defensively.

Twitter: BearsOnSI

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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.