Bear Digest

Shane Waldron Wins Points for Adapting But Needs Early Scores

Analysis: The praise for Bears offensive coordinator Shane Waldron adapting his play scripting is nice but his offense still needs to show it can score to start games.

Gene Chamberlain

Shane Waldron has been willing to adapt how he starts game, and now maybe they'll even start to score more then.
Shane Waldron has been willing to adapt how he starts game, and now maybe they'll even start to score more then. / Matt Marton-Imagn Images
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The easy scapegoat for every Bears team has always been the offensive coordinator.

In other cities, it might be the defensive coordinator. But other cities lack the tradition of defensive success the Bears have enjoyed.

The Bears haven't, of course, succeeded much on offense and it's mainly because they lacked a quarterback. Even a bad offensive coordinator could look better with a good quarterback.

Earlier this season, Shane Waldron looked like the new John Shoop, Terry Shea or Luke Getsy because the Bears offense started the season the way they start most games. However, it has changed since their win over the Rams keyed their current three-game winning streak.


Waldron's offense still hasn't scored a touchdown on an opening drive, but continues to finish games strong.


Matt Eberflus found that and other reasons to applaud Waldron during Monday's press conference.

The double-screen fake and throw to Cole Kmet is earning Waldron plenty of respect nationally for creativity after the early Bears offensive efforts produced the opposite. Even Eberflus, defensive side coach that he is, loved the play.

"Well, I liked the fact that we got some explosives in there," Eberflus said. "We stayed committed to the run game. So, we stayed committed that way. That’s an important thing to have balance in this league. Because you can't become one-dimensional one way or the other.

"I also think the explosive plays and some creativity, the creative plays. Cole (pass) up the middle, I think that was really creative. I do like the way they responded to adversity when we got the penalty for two guys moving, I think it was third-and-9 I believe at the time. The play call there was really good relative to where we are on the field."

That was the third-and-9 back-shoulder throw by Williams to Keenan Allen for a TD.

"A lot of good things going there," Eberflus said. "We had a good flow going, the offensive staff is really doing a good job of helping a lot of those ideas, and the execution piece with the positions.

"But yeah, I thought he called a really good game."

The slow starts remains a sore spot but it's better to finish strong in the NFL and there is no denying this. Too many of the games come down to the final two minutes to doubt it.

After the Colts game, Waldron's meeting with offensive leaders was highly publicized and one of the topics addressed was a need for their offensive game plan to have a series of scripted plays at the outset along the lines of the 49ers' famed 15 scripted plays from the Bill Walsh era. NFL Network's Stacey Dales reported on this lack of scripted plays last week during the team's stay in the London area.

Eberflus discounts some of the validity of such comments or reports.

"Yeah, I don't know if that's completely all the way accurate," he said. "I mean, we always have openers (plays) that we practice and that's a big part of it. So we have several plays listed as openers.

"So openers are plays that you're going to use on first and second down and then obviously you go to your third-down script based on the distances. That's what pretty much everybody does."

It was more a case of organizing those plays, Eberflus said. But it sounded exactly like what was reported about the meeting, in that there had to be a series of scripted plays.

"That was just more of a communicating with the leadership of the offense with Shane and myself to be able to put those (scripted plays) in order," Eberflus said. "So we put those in order, so the guys knew exactly what Play 1 was, Play 2 and so forth and what the first third-down plays were and kind of working that way."

It sure sounded like a scripted play situation, as Dales reported. And Eberflus did underscore the importance.

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"Guys can practice that, they can rehearse it mentally in their minds," he said. "They can rehearse it obviously in the walk-throughs that they did prior to the game and just basically putting those in order so that's really all it was.

"But again, it's just about good communication. Guys working together to get to the right answer. Not necessarily your answer. But it's always going to be the right answer for the group."

The group approach and semantics about the scripted plays is all fine and dandy but the real need is to get more production out of the game's first drives.

The Bears are 0-for-6 at getting touchdowns on opening drives even after they had their little meeting and asked for scripted plays. They are 30th in the NFL in first-quarter scoring with an average of 1.7 per first quarter.

However, they rank second in the NFL in fourth-quarter scoring at 9.5 points a game. All this from an offense ranked 24th in the league and 22nd in passing.

It's mostly true in the NFL, as Waldron pointed out, that you can't lose a game in the first quarter but you definitely can win it in the fourth quarter. If you had to make a choice, the fourth quarter is more important.

Then again, if you had your druthers, a few more points early, and on the first drive especially, can make those 9.5 points per fourth quarter all the more effective.

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.