Bear(ing) the News – A Chicago Bears Blog

Michael David Smith at profootballtalk.com quotes head coach Ben Johnson on quarterback Caleb Williams.  Williams is apparently doing what it takes to improve his accuracy.  His completion rate was only 58% last year.

“He’s done a great job over the spring and summer, just looking at himself, body position-wise, from an accuracy standpoint, are my feet aligned to where I want to throw the ball?  The ability to see where I should go with the football, to process a little faster, that’s where I’m hopeful that we see another step in terms of the processing speed.”

I think that last part can’t be emphasized enough.

The head and the arm are connected and how accurate a quarterback is will depend a great deal on how confident he is about where he’s throwing the ball.  Mitch Trubisky came into the NFL with an extrememly accurate arm.  But he never showed that with the Bears because he never got comfortable with reading what was in front of him.

As Williams progresses with his processing speed, everything will slow down.  He’ll be more relaxed about getting himself set and he’ll be able to concentrate more on placing the ball where it needs to be to hit a receiver in stride.  Its notable that Johnson emphasized 

Most of us depend upon video analysis to judge how fast a quarterback is processing what he sees.  This analysis is usually done by a member of the media who doesn’t know exactly what the play call was or exactly where the quarterback is being told to place his eyes.  But I would say you can easily loook at how accurate a quarterback like Williams is and that will tell you a lot about how well they’re seeing the game.

Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune on how the Bears are percieved outside of Chicago:

“It remains to be seen how deep the belief is outside of the region in the Bears’ ability to repeat. Remember, Poles’ goal was to “take the North” and never give it back. Fanatics Sportsbook on Tuesday had the Detroit Lions as the +170 favorite to win the division, followed by the Green Bay Packers at +210, the Bears at +310 and the Minnesota Vikings at +575.

“That’s probably due in part to the volume of late-game heroics that propelled the Bears in 2025. Internally, they know there are areas that need improvement and more consistency.”

“If you’re looking for a chip to put on some shoulders, that’s a good one right there: You’re third in odds to win a division you won last year.”

That’s fair enough.  But objectively, there’s good reason to doubt whether the Bears can repeat what they did last year.  And it goes beyond improving their consistency and their penchant for winning one-score games.

We’ve heard many times about how turnovers are not something you can depend upon year to year.  The Bears had not one, but two players who had a career year (Nashon Wright), or a near career year (Kevin Byard).  Both are gone this season.

But the real reason to be worried about the Bears’ chances is that they won only 2 games within the division last year.  And one of those was a miracle, once-in-a-generation comeback against the Packers. The Bears scored an average of 20.5 points per game against division opponents Vs. 28.9 oveall against the league. I have to believe that every team that the Bears are scheduled to play will be looking at what the division did to stop their offense last year and, whatever that was, they will all be doing it.

I’m sure the Bears are looking to evolve and make adjustments.  And I’m sure they are very aware of their struggles against the division.  But unless they improve that divisional record with a first-place schedule against the rest of the league, I can’t help but think that third place is about right.  Or worse.

Mike Florio usually has logical takes on various NFL storylines (even though they tend to be slanted in favor of the players and their agents). But I think he’s way off on this one.

When discussing Brendan Sorsby’s ability to enter the NFL without serving the punishment dished out by the NCAA, he supported the use of a precedent involving Kayshon Boutte, a player who entered the NFL with similar gambling problems, to allow Sorsby to avoid the consequences of his actions.

In 2011, the NFL suspended former Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor for five games after he was taken in the supplemental draft, mirroring a pending five-game NCAA suspension. Appearing Wednesday on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas, agent Ron Slavin was asked whether the NFL may try to do to Sorsby what it did to Pryor.

“No, because ++there’s a precedent set++ with the Boutte kid out of LSU, where he had gambling and when he got to the NFL . . . he didn’t get any suspension or sit out at all,” Slavin said. “So, I think the precedent’s been set there. I mean, those conversations will still be had, but I don’t think you can really just make up rules as you go. Once you set a precedent, that’s what it is.”

In theory, Slavin is right. In practice, well, the NFL has a bit of a reputation for making up rules as it goes.

There’s a difference between Boutte and Sorsby that, on the surface, is irrelevant. But it could cause the league to reach a different outcome.

In Boutte’s case, his gambling addiction, underage betting, and wagers placed on LSU games while playing for LSU didn’t come to light until after Boutte’s rookie season with the Patriots had ended. For Sorsby, it’s all out in the open as he enters the league, after losing his NCAA eligibility.

As to Boutte, a suspension would have put a spotlight on the NFL’s failure to know about his betting before he entered pro football. As to Sorsby, everyone knows. It has become a major story. It will be harder for the NFL to look the other way.

It shouldn’t matter. The Boutte precedent should guide the Sorsby decision. The NFL, however, prefers to make decisions on a case-by-case basis, without past outcomes or prior reasoning tying its hands in a given situation.

It does matter. The NFL suspended Pryor because he was trying to enter the NFL to avoid a suspension that the NCAA had already applied. In Boutte’s situation, that wasn’t the case. He hadn’t been caught, and the NFL hadn’t administered a punishment that he would have had to serve had he continued to play college football.

Players shouldn’t be allowed to willfully break the rules in college, knowing that all they have to do is apply for entry into the NFL to avoid the consequences. That, right now, is what Sorsby is trying to do.

It will be interesting to see what the NFL does in this situation. Sorsby was ruled completely ineligible to play by the NCAA. I’m assuming that the ruling of a local judge turning that into a 2-game suspension won’t be relevant to the NFL. But what Sorsby’s ineligibility translates to in terms of NFL punishment, I don’t know.

Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune answers your questions.

How do you explain the Bears going through free agency and the draft without adding an edge rusher to the mix? — Eric B., Lisle

I wish I had a really good answer for you, but it’s a little difficult to understand. The players in free agency — and there weren’t a lot of them — who could be potential difference makers were priced very high. Considering the salary-cap situation and not wanting to go overboard in kicking the can down the road to clear space, the Bears didn’t get involved with any of those guys.

Just like offensive coaches talk about scheming for matchups, defensive coaches do the same thing. It’s worth wondering if defensive coordinator Dennis Allen feels like he has enough to work with to create matchups consistently, especially on critical downs.

“We’re certainly going to coach better than what we did a year ago,” [head coach Ben] Johnson said of the pass rush. “It starts there. We’ve made a concerted effort with how we’re going to get that done. We were excited about the guys that ended up finishing the season on IR, the trajectory that they were on, both Dayo [Odeyingbo] and Shemar [Turner]. When you look at it from the start of the season to the point where they both got injured, we saw growth and we saw them trending the right direction in terms of what we want to see on game day.

“The combination of us being able to coach better and those guys taking the next step as part of this system, we’ve got some pretty good pieces to work with.”

Before the draft, I actually sent in a question to Biggs asking if there was any possibility that the Bears thought they filled the need at pass rusher by drafting Turner last year. It didn’t make it in, possibly either because Biggs thought it was a ridiculous question or because he didn’t know how to answer it.

Either way, although, like Biggs, I personally disagree with this notion, I’m not sure the Bears didn’t consider the defensive line situation to be a stable one before the draft for exactly that reason. The quote from Johnson above certainly backs that up.

As far as scheming pass rush goes, Allen could certainly do it. But if that’s the plan, it didn’t work out well last year. Perhaps that part of what Johnson meant by “coaching better than we did a year ago”.

The king in this regard is Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores. He’s very good at it, but despite all of the plaudits that are routinely thrown his way, there are major disadvantages to doing this. The things that you need to do to manipulate an offense into favorable pass rush situations leave holes in the defensive scheme. Good offensive teams can take advantage of these holes with favorable down and distances.

Finally, if you are wondering why the Bears didn’t do more in free agency to fill the need for defensive line help, look no farther than coming negotiations with quarterback Caleb Williams. Williams is now entering year 3 of his rookie deal. The Bears will be looking to lock him up with a long-term contract before he enters year 5.

Assuming Williams continues to develop to reach his full potential, my guess is that everything short of stock in the team is an option in those negotiations. That would include a fully guaranteed Deshaun Watson-type deal. The Bears wouldn’t like it. And the rest of the NFL really wouldn’t like it. But record setting or not, if Williams stays healthy and develops to be at least better than average from the pocket, I think they’d do it.

Whatever they do, it will require that they plan to have a lot of open cap space. There are a lot of veteran options that can be signed to one-year contracts out there right now, but they won’t be cheap, and the Bears don’t have a lot of cap space. Opening up more means kicking the cap money down the road. I just don’t think they can afford to do that.

In any case, between good coaching and better injury luck, the Bears evidently think that they can get by with the players they have. Like it or not, we might have to consider the need for a pass rush to be filled.