Kevin Fishbain at The Athletic gives an overview of the Bears offensive roster heading into camp. I have selected comments:
Caleb Williams — The excitement is palpable. Pairing Williams’ natural abilities with someone like (head coach Ben) Johnson could give the Bears what they’ve swung and missed at for decades. If that’s true, we should see signs of it right away in camp — real signs of progress and the ability for Williams to take off.
I remain convinced without reservation about Williams’ talent. I am positive that he will succeed in the NFL. That is the floor. Eventually, I think the odds are excellent that he’ll be a top ten quarterback. The only question is whether that will be the Bears.
They already wasted his rookie year with poor offensive coaching. He can’t afford to have another. Let us all hope that this coaching staff can bring out the best in him. It is not an exaggeration to say that the entire year depends upon it. It is not a big exaggeration that the future over many years depends upon it. If they can’t get this one right, is there any hope that they will ever get it right?
Austin Reed — After a 12-of-16 passing performance last preseason with a touchdown, we should see more from Reed this year, especially with the two joint practices likely limiting what Williams does in the preseason. Will he do enough to return to the practice squad, but not too much to get poached?
I think it’s fair to say that all of us like Reed. He’s the underdog, and most people root for the underdog. But he’s just a little undersized at 6’1″ and he doesn’t have a big arm. He might be a caterpillar waiting to emerge as a butterfly. But I think few people are sweating the possibility that he’ll be poached.
Kyle Monangai — Few seventh-round picks have generated as much buzz as Monangai. Now we’ll see if he can live up to it this preseason.
Travis Homer — Every team has those couple of players whose value goes beyond the usual box score. That’s Homer and what he brings to special teams.
Ian Wheeler — A “Hard Knocks” darling last summer, Wheeler’s torn ACL was a gut-wrenching moment on the HBO show. He’s back, he’s fast, but the practice squad is likely his destination.
What happens with all three of these guys depends largely on what they do on special teams. In that respect, Homer has an edge. Monangai is a draft pick, albeit a 7th rounder.
Though they are getting better at dealing with them, a lot of the time players like Wheeler still come back from these knee injuries and they aren’t quite right for another year afterwards. And you definitely got the impression that Wheeler was the special project of running backs coach Chad Morton and offensive assistant Jennifer King. I think it’s fair to wonder whether new running backs coach Eric Bieniemy will feel the same.
Without an advocate, Wheeler might be facing an uphill battle here.
Darnell Wright — Wright didn’t seem to be fully healthy last season, preventing a big jump in performance. With a new offense and coaching staff, let’s see how much he can ascend. The tools are there.
This is the first that I’ve read anywhere that Wright might not have been healthy last year. If that’s so, he did a pretty good job. This gives me hope that he will be even better this year. That’s a very good sign.
Jonah Jackson — The lineman we might talk about the least, Jackson had a frustrating season in Los Angeles and now reunites with Johnson. He did go to the Pro Bowl after the 2021 season.
When the Bears acquired Jackson I had a lot of question about what exactly went wrong in Los Angeles. After all, if Johnson is a good offensive coach, Rams head coach Sean McVay is no slouch either. As it turns out, both Mcvay and GM Les Snead have acknowledged that the problem wasn’t with Jackson. From the Pardon My Take Podcast via *USA Today** the suggestion is that the problem was that Steve Avila, who was originally slated to be the center, couldn’t make the move which necessitated that Jackson move there.
“You know, we didn’t miss on him,” McVay said of Jackson. “What we did was, we missed on projecting some people to play the center spot. He had some unfortunate injuries where he never had a chance to really get the foundation. This guy’s a stud – stud human, stud physically, mentally tough dude. I’m a big fan of him. He’ll do really well for them. There’s a reason Ben (Johnson) wanted him back.”
“We attempted to move Steve Avila to center,” Snead said. “It wasn’t like it was a wild guess. He played center in college. It’s different playing center in the NFL and it’s different playing center for Sean McVay. When we did move Steve to center, it’s one thing going through OTAs but once we got to the stressful portion of the training of Steve to center, that’d be training camp. Both Jonah and Steve [were] injured so once we got to the season, that’s even more stressful than training camp. We attempted it maybe once in the Miami game. It just became very clear that we had run out of time with this experiment and at that point, we had dug ourselves a hole in the regular season so we didn’t have a margin for training new centers.”
This explains a lot. But the fact remains that Jackson plays just 4 games in 2024 and only 2 after returning from IR in Mid-November. So the Rams evidently still weren’t happy with him at left guard after he came back.
In any case, here’s hoping he gets his mojo back with the Bears.
Doug Kramer — He’s back for Year 4, and two massive flubs last season overshadowed what was a big step forward for him as a center.
Kramer has always struck me as being a bit undersized, and he’s been a fringe player since he was drafted. Johnson has stated outright that he’s looking for offensive linemen who can pass block first. This leads me to wonder if Kramer has finally reached the end of the line with the Bears.