Dan Wiederer at the Chicago Tribune talks about the performance of the offense in OTAs and last week’s mini-camp:
“Explosiveness in the running game was hard to identify throughout organized team activities and minicamp. The consistency of receivers getting open proved iffy. And far too frequently, quarterback Jay Cutler would scan the field, see all his targets blanketed and, in the interest of avoiding disaster, whistle a throw toward the Metra tracks east of the practice fields.
“Just like that, all the chatter in Lake Forest about the offensive growth began to feel a little hollow.”
Indeed, this is not the first time I’ve heard that the offense is not doing well. Zack Zaidman at WSCR told Mike Mulligan and Brian Hanley on the Mully and Hanley Show yesterday morning that the offense hadn’t been looking good though when pressed for details he simply talked about the players they’d lost.
Personally, I’m not too worried about the issues cited above yet. For instance, it could be that the defensive coverage has simply improved and, given their familiarity with the offense and the patterns, wide receivers are simply finding it harder to get open.
Bottom line, problems in a practice setting early in the offseason don’t raise my antennae much.
What would worry me, however, is if we start hearing about missed assignments or comments indicating that the players aren’t all on the same page. That you can evaluate, even in a setting when there is no hitting going on. When you have a new coordinator, especially an unproven one like Dowell Loggains, the risk of the offense becoming “uncoordinated” becomes considerably greater. That we will want to keep an eye on, especially when we get to the point where the defense can start showing blitzes and adjustments need to be made.
But given that the comments aren’t aimed in that direction, I think we can afford to wait until the players actually hit the field in game situations to start judging the growth of the offense.