I made it out to Bears training camp for their first open practice today, so I wanted to share a few observations. This was the 2nd day of camp and there were no pads, so I’m not going to focus too much on specific plays. I’m more interested in what the depth chart roughly looks like now and what guys look like they do or don’t belong, athletically speaking.

Offense

• Let’s start with Mitch Trubisky, who looked really good today. He was very sharp mentally, making quick, decisive reads consistently in full team drills. His passes were consistently on target (not just catchable, but right on the money) for everything 20 yards and in, and even the long balls were pretty solid for the most part. When I went to camp last year, I commented that he was thinking instead of playing, but today he was in control and could just go out and play. I was most impressed with how fast he got the ball out, often throwing it right as the target was making his break. He was clearly the best quarterback on the practice field (which he should be), but that was not the case when I was there last August.
• Depth chart stuff: it’s default for veterans to start ahead of rookies early in training camp, so I found it noteworthy that a few offensive rookies were already fairly high on the depth chart. David Montgomery and Mike Davis seemed to be splitting reps at RB, and undrafted rookies Sam Mustipher (C) and Alex Bars (LG) were both on the 2nd string offensive line. They both have familiarity with OL coach Harry Hiestand from their time at Notre Dame, and it appears one or both have a decent shot at making the roster if they can have a good camp/preseason.
• I paid close attention to the TEs, where I was very curious to see how Bradley Sowell looked. I was pleasantly surprised in that he didn’t actually seem out of place, which is impressive considering he’s switching from OL to TE this year. He has clearly slimmed down and didn’t look oversized, and was fairly fluid running basic short routes. I’m not saying he’s going to be stealing targets from Trey Burton or anything like that, but he looked more like a TE and less like an OL trying to play TE than I expected, which is a good start to being capable depth behind Adam Shaheen (who himself looked slimmed down) as the in-line TE.
• Speaking of TEs, Dax Raymond was the undrafted rookie getting all the hype from fans this offseason, but right now he seems to be clearly behind fellow undrafted rookie Ian Bunting. Bunting took a bunch of reps with the 1st string offense in late 2 minute drills, and Raymond got none.
• Hyped rookie WRs Riley Ridley and Emanuel Hall didn’t practice, so unfortunately I can’t say anything about where they seemed to be in the WR pecking order. It would have been kind of hard to figure out, though, because WRs, RBs, and TEs rotated through with the 1s and 2s a whole bunch.
• The 2 guys who got the ball the most in full-team work, by far, were Allen Robinson and Tarik Cohen. I would guess they are going to be the main weapons this year.

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This is part of a series of collaborations between film guru Robert Schmitz of Windy City Gridiron and stats guy Johnathan Wood of Da Bears Blog. We’re excited to be working together to bring fans of both sites great content by combining our approaches.

Previously, we’ve identified the deep passing game as one area where Mitchell Trubisky struggled in 2018. He missed a lot of throws to open targets, which resulted both in a low completion percentage and too many interceptions.

However, we also showed that deep passing performance is highly variable, and thus Trubisky is likely to improve there in 2019, especially with some tweaks in his throwing mechanics that can be made to help his accuracy.

Today we want to look at what targets would benefit most from that expected deep ball improvement, should it happen. In order to do that, I used Pro Football Reference’s Game Play Finder to look at what players Trubisky targeted deep most frequently in 2018. That information is shown in the table below for all five players who were primary weapons for the Bears in 2018.

Allen Robinson was Trubisky’s most frequently targeted deep threat, but Anthony Miller got – by far – the highest portion of his total targets and yards from Trubisky on deep plays. Despite finishing 5th on the team in targets and yards, both by a healthy margin, he was 3rd in deep targets and 2nd in deep yards.

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For the first time in a long time, the Chicago Bears were legitimately fun to watch in 2018. Following years of terrible, boring teams, they went 12-4, scored some big man touchdowns, had plenty of awesome celebrations, and started the most exclusive club in the country to celebrate their wins.

But 2018 was last year, and now I’ve seen some worry that it will prove an aberration. They point to the 2017 Jacksonville Jaguars, who made a similar jump from years of awful to a division win and playoff berth before falling back to Earth in 2018, as a sign of what is to come.

While I’ve been on the record going back to 2017 that this is the earliest year when their title window will fully open, I still wanted to take a realistic look and see if there might be reasons to expect regression in 2019 instead. Accordingly, I’m looking at recent NFL history to see how teams similar to the 2018 Bears followed it up the year after. Since the NFL switched to its current 32 team, 8 division format in 2002, that serves as a nice starting point for this study. I looked at wins per year for all teams from then to 2017 (the last year in which we can track how teams did the year after), and identified teams similar to the Bears in a variety of ways. Full data can be seen here.

12+ Wins

To start out, I looked at teams that won 12 or more games in a season, as Chicago did in 2018. That data can be briefly highlighted like so:

• Teams with 12+ wins: 74
• Average # wins: 12.7
• Average # wins next year: 9.6
• Net change: -3.1 wins

The average team that won 12+ games decreased by just over 3 wins the following year, which makes a lot of sense. It’s hard to win 12 games in a season, which is why fewer than 5 teams per year, on average, do it. Remaining one of those top 5 or so teams for a 2nd year straight is no small feat.

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Chicago’s defense was really, really good in 2018. They led the NFL in points allowed, turnovers forced, touchdowns scored, and passer rating against, and finished 3rd in both yards and sacks. They finished as the runaway best defense in Football Outsiders’ DVOA, which is intended to be an all-encompassing metric, and even finished as the 8th best defense ever in DVOA’s database, which runs back to 1986.

Now as we head into 2019, fans are rightly wondering if Chicago’s defense can repeat that performance. While I won’t pretend to be able to predict the future, I can look at the past to see what it might have to tell us. So I looked at top defenses in recent NFL history and measured, through a variety of metrics, where the 2018 Bears excelled. Then I looked to see how they followed that up in the next season. Full data collected can be viewed here for transparency’s sake.

DVOA

The DVOA system is set up such that an average defense gets a score of 0, with negative numbers indicating you are better than average (the farther from 0 the better). The Bears finished with a final score of -26.0, so I looked at other teams in the last decade (2008-17) who finished at -20 or better. This was quite a small list, as it featured only 10 teams. Here’s how they fared in the season following that dominant performance:

• Average DVOA: -25.1%
• Average following DVOA: -8.8% (8th in NFL)
• Change: 16.4%
• # teams with better DVOA following year: 0
• # teams top 5 in DVOA following year: 5
• # teams top 10 in DVOA following year: 8
• # teams below average in DVOA following year: 1

First, notice that none of these defenses were as good the following year. This isn’t surprising; there were only 10 teams in 10 years who achieved this caliber of DVOA. The odds of doing that twice in a row are very low.

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The Bears had the best pass defense in the NFL last season, finishing 7th in yards, 1st in yards/attempt, 1st in interceptions, and 1st in passer rating against. Now I want to look at the performance of each individual player in coverage, using stats from The Quant Edge.

Where They Lined Up

Let’s start by taking a look at where the CBs lined up. I’m only looking at the CBs here because all of the LB are listed as “LB” and all of the safeties “FS” for pretty much the whole time, thus those designations aren’t particularly helpful.

Pretty much the only point I wanted to make here is that the Bears played their CBs in specific spots, not against specific match-ups. Kyle Fuller covered the left (right side from offense’s perspective), Prince Amukamara the right, and Bryce Callahan the slot. Toliver filled in for Prince when he was out hurt (and some for Fuller late in blowouts), and McManis for Callahan.

Of course, Callahan is now gone, so it’s worth noting that 89% of Buster Skrine’s snaps came in the slot in 2018. It’s reasonable to think that will be his role in Chicago as well, but he has played outside a good bit in the past, so maybe he moves if Fuller or Amukamara get hurt and the Bears like McManis or Duke Shelley at nickelback.

It’s also fair to wonder if new defensive coordinator Chuck Pagano will ask his cornerbacks to move around a little bit more. When he was the head coach in Indianapolis in 2017, no cornerback played more than about 90% of their snaps in one spot. That’s still mostly intact, but not the 98%/99% Fuller and Amukamara had.

Coverage Statistics

Now let’s look at how well each player did in coverage. The table below shows that data for every CB, S, and ILB who played a meaningful role in 2018 (OLB are excluded because they saw very few targets due to rushing the passer more than dropping into coverage. Yes, even Leonard Floyd). Positions are color coded to make tracking the table easier.

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As a unit, the Bears defense finished 3rd in the NFL in yards, 1st in points, and 1st in turnovers. Now I want to look at the impact each individual player had on the defense, as much as is possible. To do so, I’m using stats from The Quant Edge.

Defensive Line

Let’s start on the defensive line, where we can get a look at how often each player was on the field and how successful the defense was when they were in or out of the game. This can be measured through yards per carry (YPC), yards per pass attempt (YPA), and success rate, which is generally a measure of how effectively offenses stay ahead of the chains. Higher success rate

The table below shows data for defensive linemen who both played and missed 100 or more snaps, and is set up such that numbers for each category are in game/out of game for an easy comparison. Notable differences are highlighted in green (good) or red (bad).

A few thoughts:

• First, note that this data does not necessarily mean a player was good or bad, especially when we get to the smaller sample sizes (in terms of snaps played or snaps missed). But it can be really useful for players in the middle, who both played a lot of snaps and rotated out for plenty as well.
• Speaking of those players, hello Eddie Goldman and Akiem Hicks! Look at those splits against the run. Those two make up a formidable duo up front for the Bears, and allow them to be stout against the run even in nickel looks when they only have two defensive linemen on the field. If you’re looking for more specifics here, Jack Soble of The Loop Sports did a great film breakdown of Goldman’s impact on the run game.
• Roy Robertson-Harris had some flash plays this year, but the data suggests he didn’t really have a positive impact on the defense as a whole. That’s plenty understandable in the run game, because he’s not really a typical 3-4 defensive lineman and doesn’t 2-gap as well as the rest of these players.
• Sometimes the differences between yards/play and success rate can be confusing. Let’s look at Jonathan Bullard as an example. In the run game, teams averaged a lower yards/carry when he was on the field, which is good, but had a higher success rate, which is bad. That tells us that the Bears gave up fewer long runs, but still let teams stay with or ahead of the chains a bit more when he played. That could mean he played in a lot of short-yardage situations, where a 1-2 yard run is a success but keeps the average gain low. On the flip side, teams averaged more yards/pass when he was on the field, but had a lower success rate. That means the Bears didn’t give up completions as much, but gave up more big plays.

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Chicago’s defense was awesome in 2018. We all know this. They finished 3rd in yards, 1st in points, and 1st in turnovers. So let’s take the same approach we did with the offense and look at how they did defending different areas of the field. All statistics come from the NFL Game Statistics and Information System or Pro Football Reference’s Game Play Finder.

Run Defense

Chicago’s run defense was fantastic in 2018, finishing 1st in yards against, 4th in yards/carry allowed, and 1st in touchdowns given up. Now let’s break it down by different areas of the field to see if there were any weak links.

Here’s the data for Chicago’s rushing defense in 2017.

• The line at the bottom is the line of scrimmage, runs are split into 7 zones, and attempts and yards per carry are listed for each zone, with ranks relative to the rest of the NFL in parentheses.
• The height of the bar is proportional to yards per carry, and bars are colored green for top 10, red for bottom 10, and yellow for middle 12.
• Note expected yards per carry varies by region, so the colors are relative to their peers in that region.

A few thoughts:

• My goodness, that is beautiful. Their run defense was consistently among the best in the NFL pretty much everywhere. It didn’t matter where teams tried running on the Bears, they weren’t going far.

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Offensive lineman Cody Whitehair has quickly become a stalwart on Chicago’s offensive line. In three years with the Bears, he has been a high-quality center who missed only 26 total offensive snaps, and he was rewarded with his first Pro Bowl appearance in 2018.

Now that he has three seasons under his belt, Whitehair is eligible for a contract extension, and friend of Da Blog Adam Jahns reported earlier this offseason that this is expected to happen before the 2019 season begins. So today I want to take a look at contracts signed by comparable players over the last few years to see roughly what Whitehair’s contract should be expected to look like.

This is a bit more complicated than usual because of Whitehair’s position change this offseason; after three years as the starting center, he is shifting to left guard. This is actually a good move for Whitehair, because guards actually make a little bit more money than centers do. So I imagine in negotiations the Bears will try to pay Whitehair as a center, which is what he played to earn this contract, while Whitehair’s camp will push for him to be paid as a top guard, which is what the Bears expect him to be going forward. Thus we’ll look at contract comparisons for both positions to see how much they differ.

Center

The table below shows recent contract extensions signed by centers after 3 years in the NFL. I am not looking at free agent deals, because those are usually higher. Signing after three years – with one year left on the rookie deal – is usually the best time for a team to get terms that are slightly more friendly. All numbers used in this piece will be from Spotrac.

Some factors to consider:

• All of these players signed at a younger age than Cody Whitehair, who will be 27 in the 2019 NFL season. That shouldn’t be a huge deal, but is probably a consideration when thinking about length. I’d guess Whitehair’s contract falls in the 4-5 year range.
• The closest comparison to Whitehair in terms of player quality here is probably Travis Frederick, as he’s the only one of this bunch with a Pro Bowl to his name.
• Looking at when a deal was signed is important because the salary cap keeps going up. It was $155 million in 2016, $167 million in 2017, and will be $188 million for 2019. Thus expect contracts to be inflated appropriately.

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Tarik Cohen followed up a solid rookie campaign with a really good sophomore season in 2018. Despite playing less than half of the available offensive snaps and getting fewer than 100 carries and 200 total touches, he finished with 1,169 yards from scrimmage, scored 8 touchdowns, and was one of the most explosive players in the NFL. For good measure, he was also a 1st team All Pro as a punt returner after leading the NFL in punt return yards and finishing 5th in yards per return.

Despite all of this, I think Cohen’s limited snaps and touches keep people from appreciating just how valuable he is to the offense. Cohen’s diminutive stature keeps him from being a conventional lead running back, but he still has a substantial impact on offensive production.

And there are actual numbers to back it up. The graph below shows the relationship between the total number of touches (carries or pass targets) that Cohen gets and how many points the offense scores. In order to account for different numbers of snaps in games, I looked at Cohen touches out of total snaps for that game. So if he got 10 carries + targets and the offense played 20 snaps, 50% of the plays went to Cohen.

There’s a pretty clear trend where the offense scores more points when more plays run through Cohen. We see that anecdotally as well, as the Bears scored 27 or more offensive points all 5 times Cohen was involved in 14+ plays in a game, and only 1 time in the other 12 games (including playoffs). An R² value of 0.65 gives a strong number to support this correlation (a value of 0 would mean there is no relationship, while 1 would mean the relationship is perfectly linear).

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I’ve been doing a deep dive into Chicago’s offense from a variety of perspectives, and want to wrap that up today with a closer look at Trubisky. I’ve already written about him several times this offseason, talking about:

• How his approach changed as the 2018 season wore on.
• How he was really good on short stuff but struggled throwing the ball deep
• How nearly 1/2 of his interceptions were caused by poor accuracy on deep balls
• Why there is reason to believe his deep ball will improve
• How he excelled against zone coverage, except for throwing too many interceptions

Today I want to look at how wildly his performance fluctuated with the caliber of defense that he faced. Honestly, this was not the article I set out intending to write. I first did this research with the hypothesis that Trubisky did better in early games – when there was less pressure from a national audience – and struggled in primetime games where more people were paying attention. Just watching those games, it always looked to me like Trubisky was tense, like he was putting too much pressure on himself and thus not performing well. It seemed to me like he was more relaxed in early games that got less attention, which enabled him to just go out and play.

And there might be some truth to that; Trubisky posted a passer rating of 114.4 in early games, 89.9 in late afternoon games, and 63.0 in night games. But two of the four night games (Green Bay and Seattle) came in the first two weeks of the season, when Trubisky was just not comfortable in the offense yet. He was awful in an afternoon game against Arizona the next week too before breaking out in Week 4.

I then noticed that the other two night games – when he also struggled mightily – were against the Rams and Vikings, two of the better defenses the Bears faced all season. In fact, those were statistically his 2 worst games of the year, with 3 of the next 4 bad ones being the 3 weeks before he broke out. And thus a different hypothesis emerged, and I started exploring how well Trubisky performed against good and bad defenses.

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