The Bears will complete a three-day mandatory mini-camp this week, and then come six weeks that every coaching staff dreads.
Given the devices of their own, there are plenty of sports cars available for wild driving or similar unproductive behaviors to amuse those who make the money like gamers.
Assuming the Bears can make their late July reporting date for the start of training camp unscathed, there will be plenty to prove for everyone.
According to the national and other media, this team cannot currently walk and chew gum at the same time.
That’s one thing to prove.
There will be more to prove in the regular season.
GM Ryan Poles has most of his work done before the next off-season. He was the first to be on the line of fire.
Last but not least, Poles has shown that he is not afraid to identify a problem and take action to solve it.
Whether he actually chose the easiest or most effective way to solve a problem is the question, but at this point little can be done to reverse what he set in motion.
The Poles decided that a completely toxic situation needed to be cleaned up, and the only way to do that was to burn everything down. He cleared the cap spot for 2023 because it was impossible to do much more with the low cap and high debt-to-future bequeathed to the franchise by his predecessor.
The Poles decided that this was the quickest way to restore the franchise. Anything else would have prolonged the agony and made it more difficult to fulfill its long-term mission of helping the team “win the North and not give it back.”
Sure they could have kept a few players they let go or traded, but for every expensive player they got rid of or didn’t take into free agency, they made it easier to do it all at once, what needs to be done in the near future to build an eternal winner like he just came from Kansas City. The Bears are sick of winning division titles in one year only to be mediocre or worse in the next three.
The Pole also proved that he can make mistakes. While Larry Ogunjobi’s physical failure was the player’s fault, as former GM Jerry Angelo used to say, the first thing anyone has to do in their job is their due diligence. If the Poles did that, Ogunjobi wouldn’t even have gotten a contract.
This left the Bears in an immediate hole to start free agency, and their solution was to sign a player who definitely lacks the credentials of Ogunjobi or countless other NFL centerbacks. At least they signed Justin Jones to a two-year deal, and the short-term deals for him and all free agents were the Poles’ way of keeping the ceiling free of future messes while also hedging his bets. It shows he knows how to play it safe.
When the training camp starts, others have a lot more to prove. Here is who and w.
7. Darnell Mooney. It’s obvious that nobody in the receiving corps has ever fielded bigger numbers except Mooney, and he’s done better in the first two years of his career than any wide receiver the Bears have ever drafted. Only two recipients from his draft class have more catches at this point in their careers: CeeDee Lamb and Justin Jefferson. So Mooney suddenly has to appear as the No. 1 receiver. Last year they still had Allen Robinson, although – to borrow a phrase from the late great Howard Cosell – he played like a shell of his former self. Robinson’s presence for 12 games as an injured or disinterested receiver took some of the pressure off Mooney, at least at times. Who is doing this now? Bryon Pringle and his 67 career receptions, all achieved with the assistance of the game’s current best passer? Mooney was a No. 1 1/2 receiver last year. He has yet to prove he can rise to attain No. 1 status.
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6. Eddie Jackson. A safety who gets paid to play the big games has to prove he can make the big games week in and week out. Jackson stopped making them in late 2019 and has had passer ratings of 110.1 and 143.6 over the past two years while allowing eight touchdown passes, according to NFL statistics partner Sportradar. But Jackson is getting paid like one of the best NFL players in his position. Now he has a defensive scheme that eases coverage and allows security men to intercept passes and the coaching staff say they believe in him. There were 16 interceptions from Colt’s safeties in four seasons with the Eberflus defense. They weren’t players being paid a $58.4 million deal. It will take many big games for Jackson to justify the confidence the coaches have in him.
5. Alan Williams. He was already defense coordinator for a failed defense in Minnesota. Will it be different this time? Williams appears to be a friendly, mature, polished individual who is good at responding to pressure. He’s given the responsibility of calling the defense and running things, even if that’s coach Matt Eberflus’ expertise. At the first sign of failure, there will be many people calling on Eberflus to take over the defense. So Williams has to prove from Day 1 that it’s his defense and that he can execute it properly, even if it’s a scheme and approach borrowed from his boss.
4. Andreas Janocko. Dowell Loggains was set to develop Mitchell Trubisky, as did Dave Ragone. John DeFilippo also wanted to develop Trubisky and the Justin Fields. The Bears are all about quarterback coaches working closely together to develop quarterbacks that never develop. There’s no real reason to think Janocko can take a sophomore quarterback and turn it into a success based on what he did in Minnesota because Kirk Cousins was as good as he’s ever been, when he arrived in Minnesota through a free agency. He works on Fields’ footwork, throwing moves and they almost all give him snaps in OTAs. This is a good start.
3. Justin Fields. All Fields has to do is please his coaches. If the Bears lose — and there’s every reason to believe they will due to the lack of top talent in key positions for this year — Fields just needs to keep making progress on his side. He must make it clear that the loss is due to matters beyond his control. This isn’t done by whining about the situation, and to his credit, Fields has said in recent interviews that he has good teammates, particularly at wide receivers. If they lose and Fields’ game is good enough to at least make them competitive, there will be no question whether the coaching staff and front office will believe in him enough to consider other free agency and draft positions first to watch next year. Make silly mistakes, ignore game plans, don’t understand the defenses he faces each week, let the basic fundamentals slip and try to do it all yourself then all bets are off even if the surrounding talent doesn’t is sanded. Fields just needs to lead, learn, play and have faith. The coaches and Poles will be able to see when bad offensive results are due to a lack of talent in other positions. Because if he doesn’t do those things, then regardless of the team’s wins and losses, Fields will give them every reason to doubt his ability to be their quarterback.
2. Luke Getsy. The savior of the franchise is said to be Fields. Someone has to enable the rescuer to do his job. It’s Getsy, who was a Packers quarterbacks coach, that’s right. But he only did that for three years and was never really responsible for developing a successful NFL quarterback, just as he didn’t name games in NFL games. Aaron Rodgers knew what to do long before Getsy became QB coach. Getsy called a few games under Matt LaFleur in preseason, which is like saying you’ve tried on a pair of football boots once but never actually been in a game for a team on a field at any level and the sport have played. No one knows if Getsy can name games against the NFL defense. He did it a year in college when it counted, so there’s reason to believe he could. Aaron Rodgers and current Broncos coach Nathaniel Hackett raved about his coaching, so there’s hope he knows what a quarterback needs to do to develop. It’s easy to see that Getsy has more to prove at Halas Hall than all but one person.
1. Matt Eberflus. He has never been a head coach at any level and is only four years away from a coaching position. Eberflus was a very successful defensive coordinator with a system that did exactly what it said it would. However, now he has to coach a full team and oversee both sides of the ball. And in his first organized team activities, he managed to suspend the team. It was just a day and they’ve attributed it to the cockiness of young players, but there have been no penalties for teams coached by Hackett, Kevin O’Connell, Mike McDaniel or Brian Daboll, and they’re also in their early years as head coaches . You have a lot of young players. The bears need to learn to practice against the bears, Eberflus said. The Broncos had to learn to practice against the Broncos, the Vikings against the Vikings and so on and so forth. But neither allowed the players to get too close to excessive physical contact, so they crossed the line for a suspension. Minor as it may seem now, is this an indication of a lack of control going forward, or is it a runaway on the radar? With a first-year coach, no one can know. Can Eberflus pull a team together and keep them out of the doldrums, making all the numerous decisions and wearing all the hats a head coach needs to wear to be successful in the NFL? There’s a lot to prove – more than anyone else in Halas Hall, at least until next spring, when everyone will be watching Poland and how he’s spending an ungodly amount of money under an unlimited cap.
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