Bear(ing) the News – A Chicago Bears Blog

Brad Biggs at the Chicago Trubune answers your questions

“Please articulate what you believe are Ben Johnson’s measures and key indicators of success for Caleb Williams. Help the casual fan understand how he will be evaluated so we know what to look for inside of this offense. — @2004_cjp”

“Johnson is looking for Williams to be comfortable and efficient playing on time and from the pocket. He looked like that in the second preseason game against the Bills, who rested their starters. He didn’t look like that in the preseason finale against the Chiefs starters. Does he regularly hit the top of his drop and — boom — deliver the ball on time and accurately? Does he efficiently work from his first to second and sometimes third reads? Is he comfortable climbing the pocket to create space and time to deliver a throw?

“Williams excels when it comes to second-reaction plays and operating outside the pocket and in the creative world. That stuff shines when he’s in the two-minute offense. To be an elite NFL quarterback, he has to be able to win from the pocket on a regular basis, and that was a struggle during his rookie season. Williams also needs to show a mastery of pre-snap assignments, which will help the Bears avoid some of the penalties they’ve had in camp and the preseason. The cleaner the operation is pre-snap, the better idea the quarterback will have of what the defense is doing post-snap.”

As I was reading this, I was thinking about an amusing section of a recent episode of The Bill Barnwell Show where Barnwell asked his guest, Gregg Rosenthal which of two seasons he thought Bears fans should prefer:

1. Bears go 8-9 but Caleb Williams is the 8th best quarterback in the league the second half of the season
2. Bears go 13-3 on the strength of their defense and make the playoffs.

Before the second scenario was described, even before Barnwell could even finish describing the first scenario, Rosenthal said, “That’s the season I want! I don’t care!” I could only laugh and nod my head.

Absolutely that’s the season we want. Bears fans know better than anyone that defensive success without a quarterback only leads to short-term gains. Williams being a top ten quarterback in the second half of the season means a long future of competitive football.

Being something of a downer by nature, there are visions of Mitch Trubisky‘s first pre-season game in my head as I think about Williams performance against Buffalo in this preseason. Trubisky looked exactly like Williams did and we all know that led nowhere.

Given that Williams first season was a complete organizational failure, I’ll more or less say the say same thing I said last year. No matter what the record in 2025, if Williams looks like that at all in the second half of the season, it will have been a success.

Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune has 10 thoughts after the Bears preseason finale:

The overriding theme for the offense throughout training camp was inconsistency, and I don’t think we saw a ton of explosive plays either (at least not as many as I would have expected). It’s going to take some time. No one expected this to be polished after three preseason games.

It was interesting after Friday’s game when [HC Ben] Johnson again mentioned the bye week, which comes in Week 5. Previously he talked about sorting through the left tackle situation until maybe the bye. He referenced it again in regard to the offense as a whole.

“We have plenty of time to assess what has gone on over the last few weeks and what direction we have to go here for the opening game,” he said. “To be honest with you, we might have to ebb and flow a little bit after that opening game. Usually it will take up until the bye week. I think it is placed at just the right time to identify who we are and what we are going to be for the rest of the season.”

Something tells me that the bye week is going to be optimistic.

Johnson’s offense reportedly took 12 practices to install, and they weren’t done until shortly before practices began against Buffalo. Probably, Johnson will choose to concentrate upon a subset of the plays that he thinks the team will be able to execute well to begin the season. But he installed them all for a reason.

Almost certainly related to the inconsistency, QB Caleb Williams‘s accuracy has also reportedly been an issue throughout camp. Just from the brief glimpses we got of him the last two games, especially the last one against Kansas City, I’d say he shows the signs of a man who is thinking and not reacting. Thinking about the play, thinking about the pre-snap look, thinking about his mechanics, thinking about everything. The head is connected to the arm, and when athletes do that, accuracy suffers.

I don’t think we’ll see the offense be all it can be, or Williams be all he can be, until at least halfway through the season when things slow down and become more natural to the participants. To be perfectly honest, I strongly suspect that it’s going to be more like halfway through next season.

There are going to be some rough times before that, and some people in the media will start to become very critical, especially of Williams, who is beyond his rookie grace period in his second year. In fact, it’s already started and it’s just the preseason.

My advice to fans would be to have patience. Williams has a lot of bad habits to leave behind, and it won’t happen overnight, especially in this new environment. We may not know for sure whether Williams and this offensive coaching staff are going to be able to help each other effectively for a long time yet.

Kevin Fishbain at The Athletic answers your questions:

If Tyrique Stevenson takes a step and the CB newcomers impress, would the team kick the tires on trying Terrell Smith at safety? A lot of decisions for the safety room have to be made soon, and he seems like he’s someone who needs to be on the field more. — John R.

Now, if you’re looking for potential trade chips — again, this is not a report, just summer speculating — you could look at these two players, especially if the Bears feel good about rookie Zah Frazier. This is a position of depth. This will be a pressure-packed season for Stevenson. He can get a new deal after 2025, and he’d love to be known for more than the Hail Mary in Washington. The talent is there, but can defensive coordinator Dennis Allen and defensive backs coach Al Harris get it consistently? Former defensive backs coach Jon Hoke often waxed poetic about Smith, whose main challenge has been staying healthy.

You’re right, John, that the Bears have some questions at safety in the future with both starters on expiring contracts and no one necessarily waiting in the wings. I’m always hesitant, however, to suggest a position change. Smith probably has the instincts to play safety, but it’s not a position he’s played in his football career — unless he did it before high school. Interestingly, when looking at Dane Brugler’s 2023 scouting report of Smith, he writes, “he has an intriguing blend of length, speed and physicality to match up with NFL receivers on the outside. He is a physical press-man corner prospect.” That would seemingly line up well with Allen’s defense.

Having Smith as the top backup at corner is a nice commodity, especially on his contract. But if the Bears feel really good about Frazier, then maybe it’s a discussion worth having. Until then, they’re probably better off with Smith at his usual spot.

I have a feeling that this discussion is centered upon the wrong cornerback when it comes to who will be on the roster in 2026.

A lot depends upon the kind of year that Stevenson has, but this might be a situation where some good drafting has put the Bears into the position of finally picking up a compensatory pick.

Players with Stevenson’s past aren’t always let go immediately. But eventually the team in question is faced with a choice and that choice is usually to let the problem child go.

Stevenson’s emotions might leave him wound too tight for the Bears to be able to depend on him long-term. Letting him walk and replacing him with Smith might bring very little change in terms of skill level, and especially if Frazier works out well, there could finally be the kind of depth at a position of strength to allow a player to leave for a reasonably expensive contract and be replaced with a cheaper option and a fourth-round pick.

Of course, this would also require the Bears to finally stop having to build their team through the free agent market at other positions. A huge assumption, but if they manage it, it would be a sign of health that we haven’t seen in Chicago in a long time and that we’ve never seen long-term.

With Stevenson’s past, he might need to have a lights-out season to interest the Bears in signing him with the players waiting in the wings behind him.

Safety is an issue with Kevin Byard, Jonathan Owens, Jaquan Brisker, and Elijah Hicks all in the final year of their contracts. Something tells me that GM Ryan Poles sees this position as one that can be filled easily with mid- to late-round picks and second-tier free agents. He certainly hasn’t been in any hurry to invest in the position. If so, presumably Allen is on board. So it will be interesting to see how he uses the talent he has at the position.

Sean Hammond at the Chicago Tribune answers questions after minicamp:

As the Bears head toward training camp, the biggest question facing Caleb Williams is _____?

Sean Hammond: How quickly he can become Ben Johnson’s star student.

Williams will be spending a lot of one-on-one time with Johnson. During minicamp, we saw the beginning stages of that relationship. There were mistakes. There were huddles that took way too long. Instances when the coach chewed out the quarterback for being late on a throw. Those things happen — and should happen — in the spring. Johnson demands a lot of his quarterback.

The question becomes how long Williams will need before he’s thinking like Johnson. Here’s a thought that Bears fans probably don’t want to hear: This probably will take time. If this looks ugly in September and October, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Johnson seems so detailed and so determined to build his offense and develop his quarterback the right way that he won’t cut corners to get immediate results in Week 1 or Week 2.

It wouldn’t be surprising if the 2025 Bears feel a lot like the 2022 Detroit Lions, who started 1-6 before winning eight of their last 10 to finish 9-8. The Lions didn’t hit their stride until midway through the season, but when they did, they looked like a juggernaut in the making.

The real question in my mind is, “Can he learn what he needs to know?” The question is, “Can he learn what he needs to know from the coaching staff as it’s currently composed?”

I’m not going to harp too much again about the lack of quarterback coaching experience on the staff except to say that I continue to have doubts about Johnson,Declan Doyle, andJ.T. Barrett, none of whom has spent any time as an NFL quarterback position coach. Passing game coordinator Press Taylor has but, though he is occasionally mentioned as being involved, I’m not sure how much and on what level he is.

The problem is, perhaps, elaborated by a situation where Johnson was yelling, “Faster! Faster!” at Williams as he ran a play while the media was present. All present were apparently impressed by Johnson’s intensity and his willingness to coach Williams hard. But is that really good coaching?

The thing is, anyone can yell, “Faster!” at a player. Heck, I can do that. I’m sure Johnson’s mentor, John Shoop, screamed things like that all the time when he was the Bears offensive coordinator in the early 2000s. His intensity was very high, just like Johnson’s, and he reputedly used to sit in the dark and watch film until his eyes would bleed.

And yet, Shoop ran the most miserable offense I’ve ever seen. The reason was because, though he could tell a player that he needed to process faster, he very evidently couldn’t tell players how to actually do it.

In contrast to Shoop, Johnson ran one of the most successful offenses in the NFL for three years running. But he did it with Jared Goff, a veteran quarterback who could respond to shouts of “Faster! Faster!” with little extra coaching. And what he did need could be provided by Mark Brunell, the Lions quarterback coach since 2021. Goff age and experience put him into a position to take advantage of Johnson’s schematic ideas and execute them with just that little bit of extra coaching that Johnson and Brunell could provide. That’s why he was a success. But is second year player Williams in the same position after a rookie year with what was almost universally acknowledged to be subpar coaching?

Yes, Williams’ success will be dependent upon his ability to learn. But, probably even more, it’s going to depend upon Johnson’s ability to teach. And we should all certainly be hopeful that his technique will consist of more than shouts of “Play better!”

Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune answers your questions:

Do the Bears plan to move Shemar Turner to the edge? Edge is a priority need despite everyone’s obsession with running backs. — @barbersquires

There may be a chance that Turner lines up at defensive end in occasional (see: rare) pass-rushing situations. I could see that happening once in a while. But Turner — whom the team lists at 6-3, 290 pounds — is a defensive tackle. If things go well, he will develop nicely behind Grady Jarrett and become a stalwart three-technique. Jarrett signed a three-year contract, but you’re essentially looking at a two-year, $30 million deal with a team option for 2027 for a 32-year-old entering his 11th season.

The Bears need to coach up Turner at tackle and let him develop there. Defensive end could be a position they look to supplement later this year — before training camp or potentially after roster cuts. There aren’t a lot of great options right now in terms of unemployed pass rushers.

I couldn’t agree more with this.

The Bears that went to the Super Bowl at the end of the 2006 season were never the same once Tommy Harris was lost to injury late in the year. Having one or more good three-technique tackles is critical to the performance of the kind of one-gap, penetrating defensive line that defensive coordinator Dennis Allen will usually run.

The Bears need pass rush. They don’t necessarily need it to come from defensive end. You can apply a lot of pressure on the quarterback from a three-technique, where the player has the shortest route to the quarterback.

I think that the Bears should see what Turner can do, and specifically how much pressure he can generate, at defensive tackle before they start moving him around.

Dan Wiederer at the Chicago Tribune gives fellow writer Sean Hammond his take on an issue related to how GMs handle their board during the draft. It’s a long response but a good one so I quoted it in full.

True or false? Ryan Poles’ goal to have the Bears big board speak to them during the draft was a grounded, sensible approach.

Wiederer: I’m all for practicality. I’m all for draft discipline. And I do think resisting temptation is the safest route to avoid forcing the issue at certain positions.
In this particular draft, the Bears board spoke loudly about the running back position in a way that pushed them in different directions and toward other positions over each of the three days.

But… (and you had to know there was a big “but” coming), it feels obligatory to point out that the pride every front office across the league feels about its draft board is at a minimum a display of overconfidence. It may even register as misguided.

After all, Sean, what can we say definitively above all else about the draft? It’s that the boards, in totality, are always wrong. Always.

Over time, that has been proven again and again and again — whether you’re a basement draft prognosticator or a veteran NFL GM. The prospect rankings are always off. And while we don’t know specifically how or where each board is flawed in the moment, we learn over time as highly drafted prospects underperform and fall out of the league and later-round underdogs become stars.

So why is it then that every NFL GM feels obligated to treat his draft board as an answer key rather than acknowledging it for what it really is — a best guess and rough estimate of how the talent evaluation team sizes up players.

That’s why I don’t pull the confetti poppers when GMs celebrate their marriage to the board. It’s why I’m a little skeptical of Poles’ oft-repeated goal in this draft of letting the board speak to him. As much potential as [second round pick Luther] Burden seems to have, did the Bears really need another wide receiver right now instead of finding, say, a starting left tackle, a dynamic running back, a talented edge rusher or a young safety? On Day 3, did they really need to make a dice roll on speedy linebacker Ruben Hyppolite II rather than address those aforementioned positions?

I’ll close with this. Listening to the draft board often feels prudent and reassuring. But we have proof that the Halas Hall draft board is often a fountain of lies.
In 2022, for example, the board steered Poles toward Velus Jones Jr. over Kerby Joseph, Nakobe Dean and Brian Robinson Jr. The next year it pointed to Zacch Pickens over Tank Dell and De’Von Achane.

In 2019, Riley Ridley was a had-to-have “best player available” when Dre Greenlaw, Andrew Van Ginkel and Charles Omenihu were on the board.

And by now, you certainly know the history of 2017, of Trubisky over Mahomes, of Shaheen over Kittle (and Mixon and Kamara and Kupp and Godwin and Hendrickson). So, yeah.

A couple thoughts here.

First, though he was far from perfect, I have always been a big fan of the way that former GM Jerry Angelo handled the draft. Angelo always said that you should never, ever fall completely in love with a player. There are no “must have’s” in the draft and its because of exactly the reasons that Wiederer points out. Its an imperfect process.

Former GM Ryan Pace‘s greatest flaw was that he thought that acting with “conviction” was the best way to handle player acquisition. Everyone was a “must-have,” and he overpaid for players that weren’t as good as he thought most of the time because of it. Trading up for Trubisky is a prime example.

Getting back to the present, I have generally had no problems with the way that Poles has handled the draft. But I’m not at all convinced that he stuck slavishly to his board. Word is that the Bears had Shemar Turner rated higher than Ozzy Trapilo but that the disappearance of the offensive tackles in front of them, especially Anthony Belton two spots ahead of them, convinced them to take the offensive tackle while they could still get one that they liked.

In this respect, I’m also looking at the pick of TE Colston Loveland instead of former Georgia defensive end Mykel Williams. The 49ers were glad to punce on Williams when the Bears didn’t take him. Via Michael David Smith at nbcsports.com.

San Francisco head coach Kyle Shanahan said GM John Lynch was trying to trade into the Top 10 to get Williams, but the 49ers’ offers were turned down.

“We had a good idea he was going earlier, and you don’t actually know. We thought about going up and John definitely attempted. . . . But they shot him down,” Shanahan said, via 49ers.com. “And so, we were ready to watch him go away and we were ready to go to our second and third, but he didn’t go where we thought he was going to go. Then we got to our pick and I was like, ‘I can’t believe you tried to trade there, of course he was coming [laughter].’ So that’s our thing about the draft, you never know. But we stuck there and waited for our guy and we got the guy we wanted.”

It’s possible that the Bears didn’t like Williams as much as the 49ers. But I think that few neutral observers would argue that they need the pass rusher far more than another tight end.

The Loveland pick smacks of the possibility that new Bears head coach Ben Johnson insisted that he get another Sam LaPorta for his offense, even though Williams, a defensive player, might have been the better pick.

In fairness, scouts will say that, though teams draft the “best available”, the best available tend to be at the positions that teams need because those needs are in the back of everyone’s minds as they evaluate the prospects. So it’s possible that Johnson’s desire for a tight end drove the player rankings.

Either way, no matter what Poles says, I don’t think that he slavishly followed a draft board where all of the prospects were fairly evaluated for talent.

Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune answers your questions:

Who is the starting left tackle Week 1? — @brendo120

That’s a real unknown and a question one would imagine the Bears hope to have an answer for before the preseason starts. Braxton Jones’ recovery from ankle surgery clouds the situation. If he’s ready to go at the start of training camp, he’s probably right in the mix.

One question the Bears have to answer — and there are a bunch — is how do they get their best five linemen on the field. If we agree that left guard Joe Thuney, center Drew Dalman, right guard Jonah Jackson and tackle Darnell Wright are four of their best five, it’s a little easier to play the guessing game. In that case, Jones, Kiran Amegadjie and maybe Wright are options at left tackle, with Wright and second-round pick Ozzy Trapilo the choices at right tackle.

Would the Bears be comfortable with Wright on the left side? He played some there at Tennessee but was primarily a right tackle in college, and the Bears drafted him to play on the right side. Is Trapilo potentially significantly better at right tackle than Jones or Amegadjie is at left tackle? In that scenario, perhaps Wright plays left tackle and Trapilo starts at right tackle. I don’t think Wright would be in his best position at left tackle, but maybe he’d take to it naturally.

That’s a long way of saying it’s premature to do anything but guess who will be the left tackle in Week 1.

It’s definitely premature. But thinking about these things in the offseason is one reason why the NFL is a 365-day-a-year sport.

I have to believe that the Bears had a plan when they drafted Trapilo. You don’t take a player in the second round unless you plan for him to start sooner rather than later. My gut tells me that he was drafted to play right tackle.

I’m going to leave Amegaji out of this since, like everyone else, I have no idea what to make of him. He was drafted in the third round, and it is evident he was taken based on traits. He was a boom or bust pick, and he probably still isn’t ready to start.

So that leaves, in an ideal world, Jones and Wright competing on the left. Again, I’ll point to the fact that they drafted Trapilo in the second round as evidence that the Bears feel that Wright might be the better choice. Otherwise, you don’t draft a replacement for him on the right side.

This reasoning all assumes that everyone, especially Trapilo, plays like Ryan Poles thinks they can play. But they play the games for a reason, and that certainly might not be the case. The odd man out here would be Jones, but I’ve never been as down on him as some other people have. With all of the improvements that they’ve made on the interior, if he’s your worst-case scenario at left tackle, I don’t think that you are doing that badly.