There’s no need for a fancy intro paragraph today — Justin Fields did things with his feet last year that the NFL had never yet seen from a Quarterback and everyone on this site lived each moment more than once.

Justin Fields scored THREE times from 50+ yards on the ground in 2022, which no other QB has done in their *total career*.

That doesn't count the 53-yd TD @ MIN that got called back, nor his 60-yd scramble @ DET.

I get "QB rushing is unsustainable", but Fields is different. pic.twitter.com/dmKlMyBzeU

— Robert Schmitz (@robertkschmitz) May 29, 2023

In doing so Fields put the league’s defenses on notice and, by the end of the season, so consistently drew extra attention that he opened up seams for his teammates to take advantage of.

Unfortunately for Fields, those teammates were Dante Pettis, Michael Schofield, Larry Borom, and plenty of others that simply didn’t have the talent to make the most of their opportunities. Even still, we saw early glimpses of how attempts to contain Fields might backfire in 2023 — that’s what we’ll go over today. Let’s dig in.

The Passing Game

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We’re officially 2 weeks out from the start of Bears’ training camp, and that means we’re 14 days away from obsessively scrolling Twitter (and other social media platforms) for updates on Chicago Bears’ practices. With that in mind, let’s spend the next two weeks re-familiarizing ourselves with the Bears’ new additions so that, come camp time, we know the names to watch for.

To start, let’s look at…

Tremaine Edmunds

Backstory: Edmunds was the 16th overall pick of the 2018 draft and, ironically enough, was constantly compared to Roquan Smith pre-draft due their differences in style & perceived value. Edmunds had the size, length, and speed that made linebacking coaches salivate but whose instincts needed serious development whereas Roquan was seen as the ready-made modern WILL LB prototype despite being undersized.

It’s a bizarre twist of fate that the Bears effectively traded one standout first-round linebacker for another (while netting draft picks in the process) in their journey from Roquan to Edmunds, but based on Matt Eberflus’ penchant for size and length in his coverage linebackers I can’t help feeling like Edmunds will get featured within Chicago’s defense in ways that Alan Williams didn’t want to feature Smith.

I’m not normally one for paying Linebackers at the rate you could pay a formidable defensive lineman, but physical freaks like Edmunds  always command a hefty price tag — just watch him move in open space and you’ll see rare physical gifts on display. Suffice it to say, you can’t teach those traits — when pursuing a ball-carrier side-to-side, he’s a nightmare.

#Bears new LB Tremaine Edmunds is an EXPLOSIVE mover.

Watch him plant, drive, and track down the RB to make this stop on 3rd down. For a 6'5, 250lb man to do that? Sheeeeesh. pic.twitter.com/SBRzIjzBoA

— Robert Schmitz (@robertkschmitz) March 14, 2023

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It’s hard to believe that Bears’ CB Jaylon Johnson only turned 24 this April — if you’re like me, it feels like he’s been in the league too long to be that young.

And yet, it is. The 24-year-old former 2nd round pick just wrapped his 3rd season as a Chicago Bear & his 2nd as the team’s best cornerback, thus a question arises as he enters the final year of his rookie deal: Should Ryan Poles offer him a contract extension?

You’d think that extending a player like Johnson would be a no-brainer — he’s experienced as a CB1 and has already performed well in the role, he’s wildly young, and the Bears have so much cap space in 2024 and 2025 that to not extend a young player at a key position like Corner feels like irresponsible roster management. After all, the best way to combat the NFL’s Wide Receiver arms race is to stack talent at DB, right? Why create a roster hole you’d need to spend resources to fill when you’ve already got a CB1 in-house?

Like most things in this world, Johnson’s payday isn’t a question of talent — this is about money. Jaylon Johnson (who recently fired his agent) likely wants to be paid like a top-shelf CB1 (~$20M/Year), but unfortunately for Jaylon recent Corner contracts have not made his value a friendly figure to calculate. In fact, currently there are:

• Only 5 total Corners making $19.4+ Million per year
• Only 8 total Corners making $15M+ per year
• Only 17 total Corners making $10M+ per year

(A snippet of the current CB market is pictured below — click to enlarge)

As such, it’s clear that the NFL recognizes a clear distinction between a “High End CB1”, a “Mid-Table CB1”, and “Everyone Else” (including players Rookies like Derek Stingley Jr, the 23rd highest paid CB in football, as well as CB2s, etc). Johnson currently belongs in that “Mid-Table CB1” category, but would he sign an extension of $12M-$15M per year if it was offered to him? Or would he bet on himself in 2023 by playing out his final year? Personally, I have no idea.

As Training Camp gets underway, I’m excited to find out.

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As Jeff has posted (and posted and posted and posted and posted) about, today I start as the Editor in Chief of DaBearsBlog! I’m truly honored that I get to work hard writing stories, peeling apart football games, and covering every inch of the Chicago Bears with this community. Let’s get started!

For those I haven’t met yet, I’m Robert Schmitz. I’m a Texan that’s cheered for the Bears my entire life — my Great Grandfather Clarence Schmitz played for the team in the 1920s (or so I’ve been told) and since then my family has bled Navy and Orange, to the point that our fandom has driven my Cowboys-fan Mother crazy. We still huddle around the TV every fall Sunday to watch the games and I doubt that’ll change anytime soon.

I’m an analyst that loves the controlled chaos of football’s every play — eleven of the best athletes on the planet move in concert to advance an oblong leather ball while eleven more superhumans move to stop them. Some of the best minds in the world pour decades of their life into plotting, planning, and scheming up new ways to move this ball 10 yards at a time down a 100-yard grid so that they can score 6 points and ask Cody Parkey to get them a 7th.

It’s a bizarre game, but it’s a beautiful game — I love it. I want to study it and learn more about it, and that’s exactly what we’ll do throughout this football season at DBB.

I laid out my “vision” for DBB’s future a few weeks ago, but practically speaking it’ll look like the same daily posts that you’ve come to expect. Our topics will run the Bears’ gamut — player profiles, postgame notes, opinion columns, basically anything other than Haikus will land on the site at one point or another. Jeff, Andrew, and JW will still contribute as they have, so there’ll be a bevy of perspectives to see the game from. And with Jeff still around, maybe I shouldn’t count out Haikus just yet.

We’re only just 16 days away from the start of Bears’ training camp, so it’s about time we get this show on the road. Tomorrow I’ll have something put together about Jaylon Johnson and his case for an extension, but for today I’ll leave you with a question:

Do you think the Bears will win more than 8 games in 2023? Why or why not?

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Dear DBB,

How else could I start

My term on this great website

But with a Haiku?

I’m still in shock that this is happening. For those that don’t know, my name is Robert Schmitz and my journey to writing this blog post began with me chattering so ceaselessly about Chicago’s professional football team in 2018 that my wife pushed me to start a podcast “so that you can find someone else to talk to about this”. That podcast became Bear With Me, and after recording 3 episodes and posting them to Windy City Gridiron’s Fanposts section, Lester Wiltfong Jr. brought me aboard and I joined a team of three podcasts that, within a month, became just one (mine).

I didn’t know anything about football at the time, but I thought I did! And as I covered the Bears for my first season in 2019, I slowly found out that my preseason Super Bowl predictions were nothing but a sham. Mitch wasn’t “the guy” and, as it turned out, neither was Matt Nagy. It was a heartbreaking season, like so many other bad Bears’ seasons we’ve endured since 2006, but worse was that I really thought I knew football well enough to have seen the bad news coming — I didn’t. And because of that, I had spent the entire offseason hyping up Bears fans just like my younger self about the dawning of a dominant Bears age that never came. Just like my younger self, those fans felt the door to a dynasty slam shut in their face. That’s a visceral feeling.

I took being that wrong personally. I still do (or, at least I try to). And now, through detailed study of everything from All-22 footage to the innerworkings of advanced NFL metrics, my aim is to scratch and claw every day in search of new Bears understandings, new Bears insights, and new ways to fall in love with the game we’re all so passionate about.

I don’t expect everything I write to be perfect, but I guarantee you I’m going to try my best to unearth new truths and new viewpoints about this great team while consistently showing you the work that led me to those answers. I’ll use videos, audio (podcasts), twitter posts, anything I can to help build the best blog posts possible for your discussion — that’s where you come in, because you and I are a team as we build this site together.

Every post will create discussion, and that discussion will create community. That community fosters intense camaraderie, something Bears fans can never get enough of — after all, we all remember who we commiserated with after the Double Doink. I want that camaraderie for every Bears fan that doesn’t yet realize that no matter who they are or where they are, there’s always a group of wonderful people they can discuss their team with only a few clicks away.

I don’t expect you to agree with me all the time, but frankly our discussions would be boring if you did. Let’s build something awesome together.

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