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It’s easy to label anyone who criticizes the 5-1 Chicago Bears as a wet blanket, but it’s also hard to deny that despite their hot start, the team has a major problem on their hands. And no, it’s not the offensive play calling.
Through six games, the Bears rank 28th in yards per game, 28th in rush yards per game and 26th in offensive DVOA. An untrained eye might blame their offensive woes on Nick Foles (62% completion, 80.4 passer rating), who statistically hasn’t been much better than Mitchell Trubisky, or Matt Nagy, who hasn’t generated explosive plays with his play calls. But while neither have necessarily been great, Chicago’s biggest problem lies in the offensive line – and the subpar product is a result of years of negligence at the position.
The starting unit of Charles Leno Jr., Rashaad Coward, Cody Whitehair, Germain Ifedi and Bobby Massie has been consistently setting the Bears offense up to fail over the past several weeks. The Panthers game was perhaps the worst for this unit: according to PFF, none of the Bears’ starting O-lineman graded above a 70.4 (Cody Whitehair) in that game, and both Leno and Coward graded in the 50s (57.1 and 55.9, respectively).
The offensive line was not consistently good at anything on Sunday: while Whitehair had a strong 85.8 run blocking grade (the only O-lineman who graded above 61), he had an abysmal 26.3 pass blocking grade. Meanwhile, while Massie was solid in pass protection (his 84.1 pass blocking grade was the only one above 59), he was terrible against the run (47.0).
Coward was noticeably bad in his first start replacing James Daniels at left guard, who was coming on strong in his third season, and tanked a number of plays before they started. Here he is, apparently confused by the play call and blocking the wrong guy:
And here he is, getting absolutely flattened by Derrick Brown, who tackles David Montgomery in the backfield:
It’s almost not fair to single out a guy who was never supposed to start this season, especially when he has no help from anyone else. Let’s check in on Whitehair and Ifedi – two guys that were supposed to start – and see how they blocked on the pass play that led to Nick Foles’ INT:
Oof. No way Foles should have made that throw, but it’s just another example of a play that didn’t even have a chance. The Panthers game – and the Buccaneers game, and the Colts game – were littered with them. It’s a miracle that David Montgomery is averaging even 3.7 yards per carry, since his line continues to lose one-on-one matchups and fails to open up holes.
It should be noted that offensive line coach Juan Castillo was not on the sidelines nor at practice this week, as he was in quarantine after a close contact of his tested positive for COVID-19. Still, this appears to be a problem with no clear solutions. Chicago could sub in Notre Dame product Alex Bars for Coward, who settled down after a brutal first drive in the Buccaneers game. But Bars is an undrafted free agent who has a limited ceiling. Apart from him, the other offensive linemen on the roster include minimum-signing free agent Jason Spriggs, seventh-round rookie Arlington Hambright and fellow Notre Dame UFA Sam Mustipher.
This debacle is a result years in the making from Ryan Pace’s questionable strategy in building the O-line. The GM has a number of high-profile misses – Trubisky and Kevin White among them – but his mismanagement of the line probably deserves more attention than it gets. Sure, he drafted Whitehair and Daniels in the second round, who are both solid guards, but he also drafted Hroniss Grasu in the third, who only started 12 games with the Bears.
And while hitting on a couple guards is nice, tackle is more important, and arguably one of the top three or four most important positions on a football team. Pace has drafted exactly two tackles in his six seasons as Bears GM – Tayo Fabuluje in the sixth round in 2015, who did not play a single snap for Chicago, and Lachavious Simmons in the seventh round in 2020, who is on the practice squad.
Instead of drafting tackles, Pace has tried to piece together a starting unit out of thin air. He extended Leno in 2017, a former seventh-round draft pick who has been average at best since entering the league. On the right side, he signed Massie as a free agent in 2016, then extended him in 2019 after his ostensibly best season, where he posted a PFF grade of 71.9 (which is fine, but not great). In 2020, Leno and Massie have two of the Bears’ seven biggest contracts, and together count for nearly $20 million of their cap.
It seemed to be working in 2018, when the Bears went 12-4 and both Leno and Whitehair went to the Pro Bowl. But in 2019, Leno and Massie regressed to the mean after having their best seasons, and perennial star guard Kyle Long retired after years of injuries slowed him down. The offensive line was a clear weakness going into the offseason, but Pace, stuck with Leno and Massie’s contracts, didn’t make a move at tackle. To replace Long, he signed Ifedi for the veteran minimum. The biggest move Chicago made on the O-line was bringing in coach Juan Castillo, who, at 61 years old, does not play football.
In short, Pace has rewarded mediocrity, and doubled down this offseason by hiring a new OL coach, converting a first-round tackle bust to guard and deciding it was enough. It looks even worse when you consider that Foles was their QB target in the offseason, who is famously both immobile and injury prone. When he won the Super Bowl in 2017, it was behind an elite line that included three Pro Bowlers: Brandon Brooks, Lane Johnson and Jason Kelce.
The Bears didn’t have a wealth of cap space in the offseason but still arguably overpaid for both Jimmy Graham and Robert Quinn. Neither have been particularly bad signings, but they could have brought in a better guard replacement or at least some more depth. Cole Kmet may turn out to be a fine player, but there were solid OL prospects available at pick 43 (Ezra Cleveland among them). Chicago has easy outs on Leno and Massie’s contracts in 2021 – which would save a cap-crunched team a sizable amount of money – but there is not an obvious replacement on the roster, and grooming a tackle would have been smart.
Today, Chicago sits at 5-1 yet remains a flawed team. They have a gaping hole at left guard, and the rest of the line isn’t playing well. They received a potential lifeline Wednesday morning when the Bills released guard Quinton Spain, and signing him would undoubtedly make the line better. But there’s still a limited ceiling, and it’s hard to take the Bears seriously as a contender until they show significant improvement in the trenches. At this point in the season, it seems like a tough ask.
