World’s Best Preview: Inside the Bears
Monsters of the Midway: Could the new Green Bay Packers offense being assembled by coach Matt LaFleur and directed by quarterback Aaron Rodgers face a bigger Week 1 challenge than facing the Chicago Bears?
Last season, the Bears ranked No. 1 in the NFL in:
Points allowed (17.7 per game).
Rushing yards allowed per game (80.0).
Opponent passer rating (72.9).
Fewest plays allowed of 20-plus yards (46).
Fewest rushing plays allowed of 10-plus yards (28).
Takeaways (36).
Interceptions (27).
Three-and-out percentage (26.8 percent).
The Bears had four defenders – defensive tackle Akiem Hicks, outside linebacker Khalil Mack, cornerback Kyle Fuller and safety Eddie Jackson – make the Pro Bowl team. That’s as many as the Packers from the past seven seasons combined. Mack, Fuller and Jackson were first-team All-Pros. The Packers, by contrast, have had only two All-Pros since 2001. Including inside linebacker Roquan Smith, the Bears have a dominant player at each position group.
There have been three significant changes from last year. One, it’s Chuck Pagano replacing venerable Vic Fangio at defensive coordinator. Pagano was the Colts’ head coach from 2012 through 2017. Four times during those six seasons, Indianapolis finished between 21st and 30th in points allowed, but he’s never had this quite of talent.
“It’s a great defense. There’s not any holes in it and I think whether it’s Vic calling it or Coach Pagano, there’s a lot of things you can do with that personnel,” Rodgers said.
While LaFleur has surprise on his side, so does Pagano, since neither team put anything of substance on film during the preseason. Thus, the Packers aren’t sure if they are facing a Pagano-style Colts defense, a Fangio-style Bears defense or something in between. Chances are it will be a hybrid, but what will be different and what will be the same?
“I feel like we’ve been watching everything,” Packers offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett said. “I mean, we’ve been really trying to dive into everything. That’s just something we want to try to find anything and everything that could possibly happen. It can almost mess your mind up a little bit, so I think it’s about us. It’s about us understanding our rules and what we’re asking the guys to do. And then understanding that their rules are the thing that’s going to save him. I think you can do that and adjust off of that. You kind of watch everything, kind of try to get as much of an idea as you can and go as far back as you have to and just make the guys comfortable with what we do.”
The second noteworthy change is in the slot, with Buster Skrine replacing the highly underrated Bryce Callahan. According to Pro Football Focus and its best guess at coverage responsibilities, Callahan gave up a 78.9 passer rating in the slot last season compared to 128.2 for Skrine. That could potentially be a huge difference.
The third noteworthy change is at safety, with former Packers Pro Bowler Ha Ha Clinton-Dix replacing Adrian Amos. Clinton-Dix, with his big-play ability and nose for the ball, could thrive behind a strong front forcing errant throws. Or, the holes in his game could put a leak or two into what had been an air-tight defense.
“I’ll tell you what I’m really, really proud of the way he’s handled himself since he’s been here,” Pagano told reporters in Chicago this week. “He’s been absolutely awesome. He’s completely all-in on the culture that we have here, how we do things, his teammates. They’re brothers, man. It’s cool. It’s really neat to see. That’s all we ask for is for guys to just come in and do their job and play hard and work harder for your teammate, and he’s done that and more since he’s been here.”
Dynamite in a small package: At 5-foot-6, Chicago running back Tarik Cohen is the shortest player in the NFL. But as the cliché goes about dynamite, Cohen is a dynamic player in the smallest of packages.
Last season, he rushed for 444 yards, caught a team-high 71 passes and averaged 12.5 yards per punt return. All told, he had 1,599 total yards and scored eight touchdowns. With leading rusher Jordan Howard shipped to Philadelphia, Cohen is the top returning player in Chicago’s backfield.
“He’s a receiver coming out of the backfield, basically,” linebacker Blake Martinez said. “He’s one of those guys that you have to understand certain tendencies, certain things that they do, understand how they’re trying to attack you, understand where your help is, and just be able to stay on him and get him on the ground.”
As a runner, he has the speed and shiftiness to get into the open field. As a receiver, even at his short stature, he is an X-factor. Cohen dropped just one of 91 targeted passes, according to Sports Info Solutions. Only Carolina’s Christian McCaffrey had a lower drop rate among running backs. Unlike most running backs, he is more than just a factor on screens and checkdowns. According to SIS, he caught his passes 195 yards downfield. That’s more than twice any other running back. McCaffrey, for instance, caught his passes minus-5 yards downfield.
“When he’s in the backfield, he’s difficult to see. That’s part of it,” Packers defensive coordinator Mike Pettine said. “And the acceleration. But he’s also a rare guy that has strength, he can run through tackles. A lot of times you’ll find it with smaller guys that they, most of their catches occur right along the line of scrimmage. Whereas this is a guy they’ll put out at a wide receiver and run him on a double move. He catches the ball down the field. He’s a special talent and one of those guys who when you start doing a scouting report and breaking it down, you understand real quick, ‘We have to know when he’s on the field and where he is.’”
In Trubisky they trust: Like the Packers with Rodgers, the Bears kept quarterback Mitch Trubisky strapped to the sideline for the preseason. Trubisky, the team’s third-year starter, played three preseason snaps. They were all handoffs.
Rodgers has said for years he puts little value on preseason reps. It’s a thought shared by Bears coach Matt Nagy.
“For Mitch, to be going against our defense every single day in practice, that was phenomenal work for him,” he said during a conference call.
The Bears have a Super Bowl-caliber defense but Trubisky taking the next step will determine whether they are a Super Bowl-caliber team. For the most part, he statistically had a better season than Rodgers, but his on-target rate of 70.5 percent, according to SIS, and 15 total turnovers aren’t good enough.
Another area where Trubisky has aimed to improve is the long ball. That’s a big part of Chicago’s offense but not a particularly strong part of it in 2018. Last season, 33 quarterbacks threw at least 20 passes of 20-plus yards downfield, according to Pro Football Focus. Trubisky ranked 21st in passer rating and 25th in adjusted completion percentage (a figure that takes throwaways out of the equation and counts drops as completions). Only two quarterbacks threw more deep interceptions than his six.
“It’s knowing when to throw the deep ball and getting reps at it in practice with the guys who are running it,” Trubisky told reporters in Chicago this week. “You’ve got to be able to recognize defense, and really it takes all 11 guys to complete a deep pass. Yeah, I could scramble out, create some time and launch one deep, but if you’re talking about just a pure dropback, it’s got to have great protection up front, you’ve got to have the right defensive look, the guy’s got to win on his route and I’ve got to put it in the right spot. There’s a bunch of things that have to happen in order for a deep pass to be able to happen. And sometimes they happen by accident in just creating plays. But just recognizing defenses, and then practice it, getting a lot of reps at it in practice will allow it to transition to the game and allow you to have more success with those.”
More than just a passer, Trubisky ranked fifth among quarterbacks with 421 rushing yards and fourth with a 6.2-yard average. Impressively, 248 of his yards came after contact, according to SIS.
“First of all, he’s an exceptional athlete,” Pettine said. “You can do a lot of creative things with them. They get him out in space, both in the run game, designed stuff in the pass game. He changed a lot of games for them last year with his ability to get out of the pocket and be productive scrambling. He makes people miss. When you build a game plan, that’s one of the first questions that get asked, ‘What kind of scrambler is this guy?’ I think he’s one of the better ones in the league.”
First-year success: The 15th head coach in Packers history, LaFleur took over a team that missed the playoffs the last two seasons.
Nagy had a bigger challenge, with the Bears coming off four consecutive last-place finishes.
Despite blowing a 20-0 lead and losing at Lambeau Field in his coaching debut, Nagy’s first year was a rousing success, with Chicago going from 5-11 in 2017 to 12-4 and atop the NFC North in 2018.
“It’s amazing how fast it goes,” Nagy said in a conference call. “It’s a blur. It was fast just leading up to it last year. You really don’t know what to expect until it occurs. What a great welcome to the NFL moment; I’ll never forget in losing that game like that.”
The Bears responded by winning their next three, then poured it on by winning nine of their final 10 games. The defense went from really good to great with the acquisition of Mack. The former offensive coordinator in Kansas City, Nagy helped Trubisky’s passer rating rise by nearly 20 points between Year 1 and Year 2.
For all the talk about scheme – talk that surrounded Nagy last year and LaFleur this year – Nagy pointed to something more intangible.
“Probably the biggest challenge is learning who your players are as people,” Nagy said. “You know who they are as players for the most part, you’re still learning that, but to become great at what you do, you have to have personal relationships with your players, and not just five or 10 of them but every single one of them, as much as you can. There’s ways to steal time on doing that. Ultimately, you have to build trust within your organization, and you’ve got to earn it, and that takes time. That was probably the biggest lesson is can we do that together as a staff and as players. I thought we did that, and then you win a few games, that trust gets stronger and stronger. Ultimately in the end, you end up having a pretty good year – not good enough – but you see that and then you try to build off it this year.”
If Nagy can guide a seven-win turnaround in Chicago, there’s no reason why LaFleur can’t do something similar in Green Bay. Nagy was armed with an elite defense; LaFleur is armed with an elite quarterback. Rodgers seems positively rejuvenated by the changes on offense, the defense could be vastly improved and there’s nowhere to go but up on special teams.
“I feel good. I feel really good,” Rodgers said on Sunday. “My body feels good. I’d say I’m happy. I really am. I’m enjoying this team a lot. I’m enjoying coming to work, I enjoy the atmosphere in the locker room, I love the additions that we’ve made to this team. Not just the big-name ones – the Smiths (Za’Darius and Preeston) and Adrian (Amos), but a guy like Billy Turner. I know I’ve brought him up a bunch, but he brings such a fun energy to the group. I really enjoy the young players, seeing their personalities come out, whether it’s Bobby Tonyan or both the backs or Danny Vitale, Marquez Valdes-Scantling or Jake (Kumerow). Just seeing these guys come into their own personality-wise just makes it a lot of fun. And to be 35, in my 15th season, to still be called upon to be at my best every week and to lead a football team, what else could you ask for for your job? I’m just happy to be here and still be feeling good and have a chance to lead this squad.”