Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune
talks about the Bears substandard defense.
It’s jarring to see the lowly Lions come in and move up and down the field and not have issues in the red zone, but Poles can make some major offseason moves to begin plugging the many holes on defense while also trying to shore up things around Fields. The Bears will be flush with more than $100 million in salary-cap space, and the loss moved them to No. 6 in the projected draft order by tankathon.com. At least two teams ahead of the Bears — the Houston Texans and Carolina Panthers — could be hunting for a quarterback.
So maybe those who want to see the offense continue to put up points in exciting games that ultimately end in a Bears defeat to enhance draft positioning are happy. I know there’s a segment of the fan base that thinks this way. But it’s frustrating for those involved and many watching to see the defense appear so inept.
Well, everyone likes to see a better draft position. But I agree with Biggs that it’s frustrating to watch the defense, not because they’re not very good but because of the reason they’re not very good.
I, like everyone else, totally understand that the Bears don’t have very much talent on the defensive side of the ball. I can live with losing for that reason in a rebuilding year. But what worries me is that is not always the case.
Biggs use the word “inept”. That’s part what I’m seeing. I’m seeing guys that aren’t doing their jobs and making a lot of mistakes.
The Bears defense at times looks poorly coached. I did not expect that with Matt Eberflus at the helm. Based upon his history I expect the defense to go out there and play at least to their abilities if not above their abilities. That is what Eberflus did with some consistency in Indianapolis. I expected the Bears to beat other teams with superior discipline. That simply hasn’t been the case, especially last Sunday when they committed 8 penalties to the Lions 2 and lost the turnover battle.
That is not happening here.
The Bears have work to do to make their defense better. They have to eliminate the mistakes. They have to start staying in their gaps in the run game and the broken coverages in the pass defense need to end. And tthey have to cut out the penalties that they’re committing at critical times.
Hopefully that will come together and they will show up better later in the year. In the meantime, Eberflus has reportedly been spending time with the quarterbacks in meetings. That’s good. But perhaps it’s time for him to spend more time with the defense that is his expertise. Evidently, they could use it.