When you have a dominant defense like the Chicago Bears have, the defense tends to draw attention away from the offense’s shortcomings. But there was no hiding the offensive deficiencies that haunted this Bears team last season.
While the defense suffered its own setbacks — bit by the injury bug and takeaway numbers were down significantly from a year ago — they remained one of the top-five defenses in the NFL.
Meanwhile, Matt Nagy’s offense was one of the worst in the league, among the bottom dwellers of the NFL. Which is unacceptable given Nagy was brought to Chicago to fix this offense.
Will this be the year Nagy’s offense finally rights the ship?
That’s the million-dollar question surrounding the Bears, according to NFL.com’s Marc Sessler, who at this point believes Nick Foles has already been named the starter ahead of what he calls a facade of a quarterback competition.
No point burning ink on Mitchell Trubisky. Nitpicking the troubled passer lacks meaning when he’s already been replaced by Nick Foles, regardless of what team reps say about a QB competition. I’m suspicious of Foles staying healthy — he’s never started more than 11 games in a single season — or resembling a top-20 passer if he does. His severe flameout in Jacksonville was hardly a resume-builder, but there’s hope in teaming with coaches he knows well in Nagy, Bill Lazor and John DeFilippo.
The sometimes-magical Foles can certainly improve an offense that finished 29th in scoring, 27th in rushing and 25th in passing, while drifting through 2019 with zero identity beyond “painfully dull to witness.” What does Nagy envision? It must be more than a plodding attack reduced to praying for the defense to pull off a pick-six in the closing moments, right? Bears fans would like to see it — we all would — in a campaign that has Nagy and general manager Ryan Pace operating under an electron microscope.
While quarterback Mitchell Trubisky was certainly a big reason for the offense’s struggles in 2019, he wasn’t the only one. It would’ve been easier if we could place the blame on just the quarterback.
But the Bears offense lacked balance with the absence of a run game, had virtually no production from tight ends, had a porous offensive line and a play caller that thought he had the league fooled.
Last season was certainly an eye-opener for the Bears, who have spent this entire offseason trying to strengthen the areas of weakness on the offense. They’ve brought in reinforcements in new offensive coordinator Bill Lazor, quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo, offensive line coach Juan Castillo and tight ends coach Clancy Barone.
But perhaps their most important move came at the quarterback position, where they brought in former Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles to compete with — and potentially dethrone — Mitchell Trubisky for the starting job.
When it comes to righting the ship with this Bears offense, there’s no easy fix. Chicago needs better play from every position. And until they prove they can be — at least — a middle of the pack offense, it’ll be more of the same for a team that appears to be wasting a dominant defense.
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