Bear Digest

Sweating Out the Need for a Complementary Bears Edge Rusher

Montez Sweat could be even better than last year and it's possible other Bears pass rushers could improve due to experience but how long can they go without adding an experienced player?

Gene Chamberlain

Montez Sweat on Improving Bears Pass Rush.mp4
Montez Sweat on Improving Bears Pass Rush.mp4 /
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Caleb Williams tried to scoot to the right out of the pocket on  a pass in a padded scrimmage Tuesday and it was a bit like walking out from behind a car onto an interstate to see a semi bearing down.

It was Montez Sweat.

Yikes.

Earlier in training camp, Sweat had made contact with Williams twice in scrimmages, which is against the rules of practice. This time, Williams quickly scrapped the play by throwing the ball well out of bounds and lived for another day with no contact involved.

Before practice, Sweat had even joked about this matchup off the edge on  a given play in given practices.

“He (Williams) just sometimes gives me that look like, 'man if you wasn't there, it would have been something special,' " Sweat said. "But yeah he needs those looks. He needs to feel that pressure, so I provide that for him."

Williams would probably like to see it less but there’s no doubt other quarterbacks would like to see it even less because they’re taking the hit and Williams isn’t. Or, at least he isn’t supposed to take contact.

The problem with this Bears edge rush is definitely not Sweat. It’s whether they can count on the other edge rushers they have on board.

GM Ryan Poles obviously thinks there could be a need for more as he engaged in the trade talk for New England’s former edge rusher Matthew Judon until losing out to the Atlanta Falcons.

The Bears could use that extra rusher for the rotation, whether from the inside or the outside. They need to take some of the double-team pressure off Sweat, although he doesn’t seem to overwhelmed by the thought of facing it.        

“Yeah, that's just a part of the league and being a good pass rusher,” Sweat said. “I've been getting chipped, double-teamed, slides, even since I was in Washington. So, you just kind of have a pass rush plan like I was saying earlier and move forward."

The Bears got by on defense fine a week and a half ago when Sweat missed several practice with an unspecified injury. Austin Booker helped them get generate a pass rush in preseason games.

“I’ve reiterated so many times he’s just a tremendous talent, really light years ahead of where a rookie should be,” Sweat said of Booker. “But I’m excited for the year and what he brings to the table.”
As for getting Sweat experienced help, he says he’s comfortable.

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“Yeah, that's a little past my pay grade,” Sweat said. “A roster can always be updated and all those types of things, but I'm very comfortable with the guys that we have in the room.”

The obvious option is signing back Yannick Ngakoue, their own free agent who heads up the list of unsigned players.  There are others and then there is roster cutdown day and what that makes available from other teams.

Coach Matt Eberflus deflects all the pass rusher questions toward Poles, including talk about Ngakoue.

“Yeah, I’m not going to get into hypotheticals,” Eberflus said. “I do like him. I like him as a man. I like him as a worker. He certainly has done good things for us in the past but again that’s speculation and other things like that.

“But again, I do love him in terms of the man and the player.”

There is always the possibility of improvement from within and it doesn’t necessarily mean because of Booker. DeMarcus Walker is still with them and was in his first year in this scheme last year, so he could be better.

On Tuesday, right after Sweat’s play, the pass rush deflected a Williams pass and then Walker and Tremaine Edmunds had him cornered off the left edge when the whistle blew denoting a sack.

And then there is Sweat, who didn’t have the luxury last year of what he’s had this year and that’s going through the offseason in the defense and then training camp and preseason. Arriving at midseason didn’t seem to bother him much, though, and the result was the so-called “Sweat effect.” He forced more interceptions with his pressure.

“For this training camp, it's my first, first training camp in this defense,” Sweat said. “Just allowed me a chance to really hone in on the defense.

“Instead of last year, I was just coming in just being thrown in the pot and kind of just having to roll, so. The role of this training camp is really learning the defense, but I mean you get better every year. Learn new techniques and all that type of stuff. So it has been helpful."

It might be even more helpful for the whole group to have the extra edger rusher, and no one is denyng it, least of all Poles.

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.