Bear Digest

Shane Waldron Goes from Zero to Very Nearly a Hero with Bears Win

A week after the Bears offensive coordinator had people scratching their head or saying his name in vain, the offense turned it around with some creative personnel usage.

Gene Chamberlain

Bears offensive coordinator Shane Waldron goes over things with Caleb Williams and the quarterbacks during Sunday's 24-18 Bears win.
Bears offensive coordinator Shane Waldron goes over things with Caleb Williams and the quarterbacks during Sunday's 24-18 Bears win. / Matt Marton-Imagn Images
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A week ago Shane Waldron was being hung in effigy after only three games in Chicago.

Such is the life of offensive coordinators in Chicago.

Last week's zero is a hero, or at least someone no one talks about. That's as good as it gets for an offensive coordinator in Chicago, as Terry Shea, Mike Martz, Mike Tice, Dowell Loggains, Gary Crowton, John Shoop etc. etc. etc. found out

Waldron's name could be said again without anyone spitting after a 24-18 win when the Bears managed two key second-half touchdown drives.

"Yeah, this is the NFL, right?" coach Matt Eberflus said. "It's a one-week league. You win a couple games, and you're all that and a bag of chips. You lose a couple, and you're the other thing.

"So it's water off a duck's back. You've got to make sure that you're focusing on your job, focusing on what you do, and making corrections. Either way, you can't get too high. You can't get too low. You've got to be steady, and that's what you've got to do as an NFL coach and NFL player."

It definitely helped the offensive output to be set up at the 16-yard line by the defense for the first touchdown, and the officials detecting pass interference on a failed third-down pass in the end zone helped as well.

BEARS PIECE TOGETHER A WIN OVER RAMS

CALEB WILLIAMS PICKS AND CHOOSES HIS WAY TO 24-18 BEARS WIN

But it was there were Waldron got to show off some of his innovative side. He had Doug The Refrigerator Kramer come into the game and the backup center blocked as a fullback for Roschon Johnson on a 1-yard TD plunge. Later, needing a first down to kill some clock, he repeated this formation and run with the same result.

Waldron might not have looked like a genius if the penalties continued for the Bears in the second half at the same rate as the first half. They had five presnap penalties in the game and Cole Kmet had two but they chopped the penalty total from seven in the first half down to three in the second half.

Williams went on to throw for the third highest Bears rookie completion percentage in a game since the AFL-NFL merger at 73.9%, and credited the work they did in practice under Waldron for much of the help.

"Our work throughout this past week was different than it was the weeks before," Williams said.

Waldron kept stressing the need for communication between players and coaches and Williams saw this as the key to the better play calling.

"I think another one was just us being on the same page, us understanding the flow that we're in," Williams said. "If we're in a flow, let us just stay in that flow, get going, whether it's the run game, whether it's the pass game.

"Today, we did kind of both pretty evenly, which is great and what we want to do every week. When it's not like that, stay in the flow. If we get drives going with the pass game, sprinkle in a few runs. When we get the game going with a few runs, sprinkle in a pass and then keep running the ball. I think that was the main point of emphasis throughout the week. Us just having open communication is most important because, like I said before, us having communication, myself being better, we're communicating. Whether it's game day, throughout the week or whatever the case may be, that I had to be better, and I think today and throughout the week, as a collective, I think we were all better.”

This includes the offensive coordinator. But you can't please everybody.

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.