The Chicago Bears are officially in the countdown to the season opener.
Training camp practices and preseason games have wrapped up. Cuts slowly trickle out as the Bears trim their roster to 53 players. Planning for the curtain raiser against the Tennessee Titans on Sept. 8 at Soldier Field is in full swing.
After a franchise-altering offseason and an extended camp, everyone around the team is ready to begin. So Tribune writers Colleen Kane and Dan Wiederer begin their first game of “true or false” of the season, addressing four key topics facing the Bears.
True or false? The Bears’ 4-0 run through the preseason is incredibly significant as it relates to their direction for the regular season.
Dan Wiederer: False. The convenient knee-jerk reaction to the undefeated run through August is to seek big-picture conclusions that confirm these Bears as a team with strong unity, impressive attention to detail and undeniable momentum. How else could they run through the Texans, Bengals, Bills and Chiefs by a combined score of 115-47? That has to mean something, right?
Something, perhaps. But something incredibly significant? Not ready to go there just yet.
Caleb Williams and the first unit offense played a total of seven preseason possessions. The Bears’ defensive starters with the highest snap count in August were linebackers Tremaine Edmunds and T.J. Edwards with 32 apiece. Oh, and don’t forget, the 2022 Bears went a perfect 3-0 in preseason during Matt Eberflus’ first season here. And many fans quickly latched onto that surge with a belief that those Bears might be ahead of schedule with the chance to fight into playoff contention by season’s end. Instead? After a 3-4 start, the Bears lost their final 10 regular season games and finished as the worst team in the NFL.
To be clear, I am still bullish on these Bears, a group that is clearly ascending and has a chance in 2024 to establish an undeniable direction toward a brighter future of sustained success. But that has so little to do with preseason results.
Colleen Kane: Right. The focus has to go deeper when trying to decipher what type of team this will be. There have been plenty of reasons to be hopeful during training camp and the preseason, chief among them the flashes of impressive playmaking ability, awareness within the game and leadership from Caleb Williams in camp and his two preseason appearances. Beyond that, the continuity among the defense — especially in the back seven — has fueled its confidence. Some of the players in the secondary, namely Jaylon Johnson, have looked really good in camp. The offensive collection of skill players looks much improved with Keenan Allen, D’Andre Swift and Gerald Everett joining DJ Moore and Cole Kmet. And Eberflus was right Thursday when he complimented the quarterbacks group as a whole for being on point in the preseason games.
But there are also reasons to have a healthy skepticism, including noting that the big preseason win against the Bengals was actually against many Bengals third- and fourth-stringers. The biggest questions to me, however, are about the offensive line and defensive line depth and whether the Bears have what they need to withstand the rigors — and injuries — of an NFL season. I end every outside inquiry about how the Bears will be this season by saying, “We’ll see.” Because that 4-0 preseason record was positive. But there’s a lot that has to go right for this team to reach its higher bar this year.
We’ll see.
True or false? The Bears should feel better about their pass rush than they did a month ago.
Kane: True. Obviously adding Darrell Taylor will help a group that has needed an upgrade since the spring. Taylor is not a four-time Pro Bowler like Matthew Judon, whom the Bears tried to acquire from the New England Patriots this month. (Judon went to the Atlanta Falcons instead after the Bears couldn’t obtain certainty that Judon would sign an extension following the trade.) But the 27-year-old Taylor has 21 ½ sacks, 34 quarterback hits and five forced fumbles over three seasons with the Seattle Seahawks. That includes a 2022 season with 9 ½ sacks and four forced fumbles. The Bears now have another option to play along with star pass rusher Montez Sweat and veteran DeMarcus Walker.
The Bears also have a better idea now than they did before camp about what they have in some of their younger players. Dominique Robinson and Austin Booker have given the team reason to believe in their upside. Robinson came in raw in 2022 without a lot of experience as a defensive player, but the Bears are hopeful he’s ready to click. And Booker has shown innate ability at the position that is exciting.
A lot of the Bears’ defensive success still rests on Sweat, but they can feel a little better about their depth.
Wiederer: I, for one, have been pleasantly surprised by how quickly Booker has acclimated. To see his work on the practice field translate into preseason game production is meaningful. And he certainly looks capable of handling a sizable role as a pass rusher when the regular season gets underway.
The depth of the Bears’ defensive front has been a question all offseason. And you have to appreciate Ryan Poles’ ability to not only recognize that but to continue seeking avenues for improvement. The trades for Taylor and defensive tackle Chris Williams should help. But I’m not sure we’re going to reach January talking about either player as the piece that pushed the Bears over the top.
I think we can all agree that this unit’s evaluation will center around just how impactful Sweat can be as the engine of the defensive front.
Maybe the best news for the Bears’ defensive line crew is that they have a pretty darn good secondary behind them which will, pardon the phrasing, take at least a little pressure off when it comes to the demand for the front four to create pressure.
True or false? Rookie quarterback Caleb Williams is on the fast track to NFL superstardom.
Dan Wiederer: False. Such a fast track is difficult to find in this league and harder still to drive down. And while Williams has done just about everything right with his approach as the Bears’ QB1 since the night he was drafted, he is still a rookie who must navigate a pretty steep NFL learning curve while enduring the pronounced struggles and frustrations that all young quarterbacks deal with.
Those expecting Williams to become an immediate standout and surpass the rookie achievements of C.J. Stroud without breaking much of a sweat may be getting a little too far out over their skis. Is that best-case scenario still in play? Absolutely. Is it likely? That’s way too hard to even guess at this juncture with Williams needing far more exposure to the pressure and challenges that the regular season will present.
As I noted this week on the “Take the North podcast,” Williams’ undeniable gifts as a quarterback plus his mature approach to pursuing excellence will give the Bears “a really good chance to have a really good chance” at finally getting things right at the quarterback position. He sure looks like he can become the key to unlocking a run of sustained success for a franchise that hasn’t enjoyed three consecutive winning seasons since the late 1980s.
But Bears fans better be prepared for stretches where the rookie’s play is mistake-filled and offensive consistency is lacking. Some weeks, the experience will feel magical. In others, it will feel rickety and disjointed. And it’s OK to simultaneously believe that Williams is on course for a long and successful NFL career while also acknowledging he’s not yet ready for an express elevator to stardom.
Kane: Exactly. I think there’s a balance here from an outside perspective. It’s obviously more than OK for Bears fans to be pumped about some of the things they’ve seen from Williams. His throws to Rome Odunze against the Bengals — the 45-yarder down the left sideline and the touchdown that didn’t count later — were special and something we haven’t seen around these parts much, and that played into the viral response to them on social media. Williams has had some flashes like that in practice against the Bears’ first-team defense. And the way Bears coaches and teammates talk about Williams as a leader and a competitor also feels real and is encouraging.
But as you said, it’s likely Williams will experience challenges in his rookie season. Even the best quarterbacks do. So it’s going to be about how Williams navigates the ups and downs ahead. I’m fascinated to see how it plays out, but I’m with you that it’s also wise to exercise caution in expectations. Maybe Williams will lead the Bears to the top this year, but if the progress is not entirely linear in Year 1, that can be OK too.
True or false? Matt Eberflus should feel secure in his job with the Bears.
Kane: True. Let’s preface this conversation by explaining why we’re even talking about it in August. It goes beyond the click-baity sites listing coaches, including Eberflus, on the hot seat for 2024. (Some list him as a coach of the year candidate too!) It’s more about how Eberflus will handle potential bumps in the road with Williams. It’s about whether the coach can feel comfortable in allowing the development of Williams to play out properly without feeling the stress of his coaching future hanging in the balance.
After two rough seasons to start Eberflus’ coaching tenure, in large part due to roster reconstruction, Bears general manager Ryan Poles elected to have Eberflus hire several new offensive coaches, including coordinator Shane Waldron, before drafting Williams. I really believe — without insider assurance on this — that Eberflus and Waldron are going to be given proper time to help Williams grow. Poles has talked about “breaking the cycle” when it comes to Bears’ quarterback failures. And to me, the previous cycle has been bringing in a quarterback and then not setting him up in the right situation, with both the roster around him and/or having the coaching staff feeling job stress. Trading out the coaching staff after Year 1 of Williams wouldn’t mesh with breaking the cycle.
I understand this is the NFL, and wild things can happen under the pressure to win. But I think Eberflus and Waldron should be given time to let Williams’ growth play out. Or maybe Williams just won’t have any rookie bumps, and this will all be moot. (Kidding, sort of.)
Wiederer: I agree with just about everything you said. In principle. It would be borderline GM malpractice for Poles to express his unwavering belief in Eberflus, allow him to hire a whole set of new offensive assistants, turn the No. 1 overall pick in the draft over to him and his staff for development, and then grow weary and reboot the whole thing the following winter. (Ask Mitch Trubisky and Justin Fields how that altered their development.)
So, yes. On the surface, the default guess would be that Eberflus will be given proper runway to see the growth process through with Williams as his QB1.
Still, just as I am averse to having MVP conversations in the summer, I am similarly opposed to discussing the job security of coaches one way or another until the season is at least two months old. This is the NFL. Crazy stuff happens. All. The. Time.
I know this much. With the way anticipation and eagerness for this season have grown within the fan base since May, there will be a lot of ugly noise if, say, the Bears go winless in September; have to part with multiple assistant coaches during the season; blow double-digit second-half leads in a series of crushing losses; and wind up as a last-place team with 10 or more losses. (Sound familiar?)
At this stage, with this group, none of that seems likely. At all. But walking into the 2014 season, for example, no one was predicting the calamity-filled freefall that was awaiting Marc Trestman and Co. In 2019, as the Bears marched into their 100th season with legitimate Super Bowl aspirations, no one was even considering the possibility of a .500 season in which the starting quarterback floundered badly and the previous season’s coach of the year, Matt Nagy, watched his stock fall dramatically.
Crazy stuff happens. All. The. Time. So let’s get to the regular season and dive into the meaningful action to continue the conversation through a more informed lens.
