Cornerback Jaylon Johnson had an impressive rookie season with the Bears last year, which included 15 passes defended in 13 games.
But that’s not enough for this defense. The goal is simple: generate more takeaways. And for Johnson, interceptions have become a priority heading into 2021. Especially given he didn’t have any as a rookie.
“The pass breakups were nice and stuff like that — but that’s not what the game’s about,” Johnson said, via the Sun-Times. “The game’s about the ball and taking the ball away.”
There was no one that did it better than Chicago back in 2018, when they led the league with 26 takeaways (an average of 2.2 takeaways per game). But that same success didn’t translate to 2019 (an average 1.2 per game) and 2020 (an average of 1.1 per game).
But perhaps even more importantly for that 2018 squad, they had 27 interceptions, which also ranked first in the NFL. Johnson believes this year’s defense can be “very dangerous” and that they can get back to that dominant, remarkably high bar they set for themselves three years ago.
“We have the guys with the ability to do it,” he said. “Once we can be more dangerous in the pass-rush, the secondary will be a lot better. We have some time to play with each other. We plan on being a lot better from a secondary standpoint.”
It’ll be a challenge for sure, especially given the uncertainty at the cornerback position with the loss of Kyle Fuller, who the Bears traded to the Broncos to free up cap space.
“We all miss him,” Johnson said of Fuller. “We know what his presence did to our secondary. So it’s just about moving forward and learning from what he did and just being able to implement that to the newer guys and the guys coming up. Just being able to take over that role and try to give the secondary what he gave us in terms of that leadership.
“It’s just about picking up where he left off.”
Luckily for the Bears, new defensive coordinator Sean Desai was Vic Fangio’s disciple, and he has a lot of the same philosophies, including when it comes to masking coverages based on disguises.
“Just being unpredictable with everything we’re doing and being able to disguise and play a lot of the same coverages and make them look different,” Johnson said. “And having variations.”
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