The Bears don’t pick until the third round. So spending time on the top prospects in next year’s NFL draft is a useless endeavor. Instead, over the next three months of Saturdays, this space will focus on prospects further down the line.

Jonathan Ledbetter, DE

Georgia

The Match-Up

at (24) South Carolina, 3:30 pm ET

CBS

Scout’s Take

From Jon Ledyard at the Draft Network:

PROS: Unbelievable frame with ideal, height, weight, length and muscle distribution. Powerful, heavy-handed defender in the trenches. Overwhelmed tight ends and fullbacks at the point of attack. Low pad level allows him to drop anchor and stack and shed blockers in a phone booth.

Nasty swim move to work over top of blockers as a pass rusher. Has powerful hands and has flashed the ability to create movement as a bull rusher. Varies his pace and can lull blockers to sleep before snapping into a plan of attack. Tough, physical football player billed as one of the defensive leaders going into 2018. Projects to inside pass rush work in the NFL, a growing role.

CONS: Overall athleticism and explosiveness is average. Not a true edge-bender, at his best working a linear rush path to the quarterback. Misses too many stops in space due to hip tightness and struggles to change direction. Range of impact on the edge, in terms of perimeter and behind the line of scrimmage stops, will likely be limited.

Stance is square most of the time at Georgia, so there could be some upside to his first step with different coaching. For now, won’t threaten tackles off the snap and does not have great pace up the arc. Pass rush wins are usually slow burn. Loses control of his frame at times and can get over-extended. Likely limited to a rotational role in the NFL, probably on the interior.

News & Notes

• Ledbetter has battled nagging injuries over the last two seasons and was arrested as a sophomore. So he’s not exactly going to enter the draft process next spring with a clean record.
• The Bears were going to head into next off-season with their most glaring need being an edge rusher. Well, that’s over. So a few places to keep the eyes focused are DE, OT, WR and across the secondary. Ledbetter is the kind of hole-filler the Bears might be able to find in the fourth or fifth round.
• The Bears put a lot of weight into what area scout Sam Summerville tells them about the southeast and the club clearly loves players from Georgia. Wouldn’t be surprised if the Bears have a few scouts at Williams-Brice Stadium.

The podcast is not going to be a weekly occurrence this season. There will be around 8-10 episodes during the regular season, beginning next week with The Return of Adam Jahns. (I think Jahnsy and Ryan Pace are giggling on a seesaw in Niles right now.) In the meantime, some thoughts…

Thought #1

When Mike Pettine was working with Rex Ryan in New Jersey the team had a hellish time dealing with tight ends. (A lot of this was the result of over-blitzing to pressure the quarterback.) And while Allen Robinson and Taylor Gabriel have been recovering from/dealing with injuries this summer, Trey Burton and Mitch Trubisky have developed a rapport that’s going to drive defenses crazy. Pettine will empty the kitchen cabinets Sunday night and Trubisky will use his security blanket to move the chains. Big opener for Burton.

Thought #2

Brian Urlacher told Dan Patrick on Wednesday that under Lovie Smith the Bears once ran cover-2 against Aaron Rodgers on 46 of 47 plays in the second half. And won the game. (Sounds like a bit of a stretch but I’m not about to do the research.) Vic Fangio should be able to generate more than enough pass rush with his front. Why not go to some Cover-2 looks Sunday night and try to limit Rodgers’ ability to beat the defense over the top? These aren’t great pass catchers in Green Bay. If they have to make 10-12 plays to get into the end zone, against this Bears defense, they’ll make a mistake (or be forced into one) before they put seven on the board.

Thought #3

Cody Parkey had a so-so summer. While I’m told he’s been lights out in non-public practices, the team has some concern as to whether the Jupiter, Florida native (and I assume golfer because that’s what you do down there) is ready for the bright lights of Bears football. You can miss kicks in Miami. Nobody goes to those games. You miss kicks in Bears v. Packers, it gets noticed. Everyone in the organization will breathe a massive sigh of relief if Parkey posts a clean sheet Sunday night.

Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears This Week?

I always like the Chicago Bears.

And, I mean, how can any Bears fan not like the Chicago Bears heading into this 2018 season? The organization has done every single thing they could to build a winning roster. Now they take that roster to the field.

Why the Bears Will Win

• Khalil Mack. It simply can’t be overstated. Mack makes every single player on an already-good defense better. The Bears should be able to mount their most ferocious, consistent pass rush in the Aaron Rodgers era.
• Mystery. What the hell are the Bears going to be on offense? Most people have pointed to the Andy Reid units in Kansas City (and kind of Philadelphia) but the talent pool in Chicago right now bears little resemblance to what the Chiefs have utilized the last several seasons. Robinson and Cohen barely showcased at all during public practices and preseason games. Add in offensive coordinator Mark Helfrich’s unique perspective and one has to wonder what Packers DC Mike Pettine is expecting to see Sunday night.
• Better Run Game Than 2017. In Jordan Howard’s two games against the Packers last season he failed to rush for more than 54 yards. Why? Because Dom Capers wisely understood that stopping the Bears run game meant stopping the Bears offense. (Hell, they ran the ball on every first and second down.) But now there are simply too many weapons in the passing game for Pettine to take a similar approach and that should free up a multitude of running lanes for Howard – the best pure runner in the game.

Why They Won’t

• Aaron Rodgers. Do you really require a paragraph explaining that Rodgers beats the Bears just about every time he plays them? He’s 15-4 against ’em. So odds are he’ll be 16-4 against ’em by the time the clock strikes Monday.
• Mitch Trubisky’s Big Night. Anyone who has spent nine seconds on this site knows I’m a big fan of the young signal caller. But this is his first game running a new, complicated offense and it’s on one of the biggest, brightest stages he’ll see the entire regular season. It’s a tough spot. The offense should not be expected to hit it’s stride until 3-4 weeks into the season but can Tru avoid the big mistake early in the season?

Neil Simon’s Best Line

Neil Simon is a criminally-underrated playwright. He never reached the artistic accolades of an August Wilson or Eugene O’Neill or Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller but his body of work is unparalleled in the history of American dramatic literature. The man had four hit plays running on Broadway…at one time. RIP Neil.

He also wrote one line I’ve never forgotten and I believe truly changed me as a writer. It’s from Biloxi Blues.

“You’re a witness. You’re always standing around watching what’s happening, scribbling in your book what other people do. You have to get in the middle of it. You have to take sides. Make a contribution to the fight. Any fight. The one you believe in.”

Read More …

The start of the regular season is usually the worst thing that can happen to the teams that win the offseason and the Bears can’t let that be the case as they open in Green Bay this Sunday.

It isn’t a stretch to say that losing to Green Bay has cost every coach the Bears have had since Mike Ditka their jobs. The likes of Dave Wannstedt, Dick Jauron, Lovie Smith, Marc Trestman and John Fox have compiled a 13-38 record against the Packers since 1993.

Smith was the toast of the town when he won six of his first eight meetings with the Packers. He then he lost nine of his last eleven. Outside of that four-year period in which Lovie had success, the Bears have gone 7-36 against the team to the north.  Trestman and Fox both scored prime time victories in Green Bay in their first seasons but it was all downhill after that.

The Packers aren’t just another team. They’re not viewed that way by most fans and they certainly aren’t viewed that way in the big offices at Halas Hall. If Matt Nagy is going to be separated from the poop platter that the team has had since Ditka, he has to beat the Packers.

He has to do it on Sunday.

He has to do it consistently.

Read More …

I thought I was done writing about the Bears until the bye week, but then they went and traded for Khalil Mack. That warrants an article. I had written pretty clearly about my expectations for the 2018 Bears, expecting them to be better but end up around .500 and short of the playoffs. Adding a player of Mack’s caliber warrants a re-examination of that prediction.

In fact, I think that this trade makes it pretty likely the Bears will make the playoffs in 2018. Here’s why.

Non-Trubisky Upgrades

Let’s start by comparing the 2018 roster to the 2017 version, which went 5-11. I’m going to look at everything outside of Trubisky first, and then consider Trubisky in a moment.

Defense

On defense, the Bears return pretty much everybody who contributed, with a few exceptions:

• DL Mitch Unrein has been replaced by 5th round pick Bilal Nichols. This is probably a minor downgrade for 2018, but the hope is that it will be offset by the growth of 3rd year defensive linemen Roy Robertson-Harris and Jonathan Bullard.
• OLB Pernell McPhee has been replaced by Khalil Mack (Willie Young and Lamarr Houston are both gone too, but neither actually played much last year). You really can’t overstate how big of an upgrade this is.
• ILB Christian Jones has been replaced by 8th overall pick Roquan Smith (Jerrell Freeman only played 1 game, so they didn’t really lose him). This should also be a substantial upgrade, as Smith was widely viewed as the best defender in the draft.

So the defense added two guys who should be high impact players and treaded water pretty much everywhere else. Thanks to Mack and Smith, this unit should be significantly improved from last year’s version, which was already solidly around the top ten in the league.

Offense

Now let’s look at offensive improvements (again, ignoring Trubisky). There was much more changeover on this side of the ball.

• Guard Josh Sitton was replaced by 2nd round pick James Daniels. This is a downgrade for 2018, but the Bears hope it offsets by having Kyle Long back and looking like himself for the first time since 2015.
• Tight end Zach Miller was replaced by Trey Burton. This is probably a wash, but Burton doesn’t have Miller’s history of being constantly injured.
• The wide receiver upgrades really can’t be overstated. The Bears replaced a cast of scrubs who were all fighting for end-of-roster spots around the league this year with Allen Robinson, Taylor Gabriel, and Anthony Miller. The Bears’ worst position group (and possibly the worst in the whole NFL) in 2017 now appears to be quite good.

Coaching

And now we move to the coaching staff, which returns virtually intact on defense but massively upgraded on offense. New head coach Matt Nagy brings with him the Andy Reid offense from Kansas City, modernizing what was possibly the worst offensive scheme in the NFL from 2017 with one that matches the Bears’ personnel quite well. Add in a quality offensive staff, highlighted by the outstanding Harry Heistand on the offensive line, and it’s fair to say the offense should be better coached than it has been in a while.

Health

Health is another key area where the Bears should be improved in 2018 (and already are from a comparable point in 2017). They were the 2nd most injured team in the league last year according to Football Outsiders’ Adjusted Games Lost, and the odds are they will be healthier than that this year. As I wrote in May, better health typically translates to better teams that win more games.

Read More …

It’s going to be a wild political season and the 2018 Chicago Bears have a chance to be the most exciting vintage in years. So DBB created a shirt combining both concepts. The shirt is being made by 26 Shirts Chicago and is selling for $24.95.

But $8 of every sale is going to benefit Windy Kitty Cafe, a cat shelter and nursery in Chicago. I’ve been very proud of the charitable work this site has done over the years and I’ve wanted to find something in the animal world that needed support.

The shirt is below. And it’s amazing. To purchase it, CLICK HERE.

To read more about the work of Windy Kitty Cafe and their new Kitten Korner, CLICK HERE.

Khalil Mack is a Chicago Bear and much of yesterday was spent dissecting the context of the move: what the trade meant. But there are major football implications associated with this acquisition as well, especially for this defense as they are currently constructed. In other words, this is what the trade does.

• The biggest beneficiaries of Mack’s acquisition are Leonard Floyd and Akiem Hicks. Throw on some Mack tape and you’ll see an endless array of double teams. (More often than not, he beats them too.) Mack will be Focal Point #1 for every opposing offensive coordinator because Mack is capable of ruining games. With all that attention on the newest Bear, expect Floyd and Hicks to see a lot of refreshing singles and subsequently expect a lot of production from both.
• Mack had 79 QB pressures last season. The Bears team had 100. Total. For Mack, that’s five a game. That’s five times a game Aaron Rodgers or Matt Stafford don’t get to sit in a clean pocket and pick apart the Bears secondary. Expect more rushed throws and thus more opportunities for the Bears secondary to turn opposing QBs over.
• It’s not easy to double team edge guys. It often requires keeping tight ends and backs out of the passing game. And in this modern NFL, tight ends and backs are wildcard weapons, keeping defensive coordinators on their heels, forcing guys with less speed to cover in space. When Mack gets disruptive it’ll force offenses to stay in a more conventional approach.
• With all the focus on the edge, Vic Fangio will be able to drop Mack and Floyd into coverage and send Roquan and Trevathan at the quarterback. Vic will able to crash Mack inside and send Bryce Callahan on a slot corner blitz. Vic will be able to do whatever the hell he wants because that is what having an elite pass rusher affords you.

Mack makes every single player on the defense more dangerous. He is among the two or three best defenders in the entire league. And the Bears defense should be expected to rank in the top five across the board because of him.

It’s on.

The time for patience has passed. The time for “Ryan Pace is building something interesting” has come and gone. The time for taking an emotionally balanced approach to this Chicago Bears campaign has boarded the 8:30 AM bus to, I don’t know, like three hours ago! (Forgive the shitty writing there but I’m pretty damn excited and I can’t wrap my head around all of this yet.)

It is on.

Does this move to acquire Khalil Mack from the Oakland Raiders mean they are a contender for the Super Bowl this season? I’d love to write a definitive NO. I’d love to echo Data’s contention that teams don’t go from crap to contender overnight. I’d love to write about the young, developing quarterback and the new coach/system and the quality opponents in the division and the blah blah blabbedy blah.

Ah, who am I kidding? I don’t want to write about any of those things. Because, as you might have noticed, it is definitively on.

In giving up multiple first-round selections for Mack, Pace is announcing that his team as presently built is ready to win far more games than they lose. In paying Mack a pile of money for his services, Pace is announcing that he’s ready to strike Super Bowl gold while his chosen quarterback is still operating on his rookie contract. Fans no longer have reason to be patient because today the Chicago Bears made the most thrillingly impatient move in the history of the franchise.

This wasn’t Jerry Angelo making the move for Jay Cutler. Sure, that was exciting but it was also bringing in a quarterback to a franchise that had never really had one. You can’t win consistently without a quarterback and Angelo understood that.

This move for Mack is about fortification. It is about fixing the only true hole in the defensive dam. It is a clear statement to the fan base that the Bears are not content with being one of the best defenses in the league. They want to be THE BEST. And with Mack added to this unit, they now have every opportunity to be just that.

Isn’t this what we always wanted? Weren’t we all tired of constantly settling for less-than-elite talent at positions across the field? This was the crux of The Great Cutler Debate (“not good enough to win championships”). This has been the crux of the Adrian Amos/PFF nonsense (“he’s a good player, stop believing he’s one of the league’s best”). Bears fans have grown accustomed to a roster of good players who struggle mightily when they square off with great ones, i.e. the fella playing quarterback up in Green Bay.

Today, Ryan Pace got a great one. That’s what Mack is. A great player at one of the most important positions in the sport. With great players come great expectations. Those expectations exist in Chicago, right now.

Commentary to come shortly.

They can’t all be positive. Three of the four will be, but not this one.

Prediction Three

The Bears will have ten less sacks in 2018 than 2017.

Why?

• The 2018 Chicago Bears roster has a glaring hole: edge rusher. The best player at the position is Leonard Floyd and he’s coming off a season where he played 10 games and registered only 4.5 sacks. Couple those stats with the fact that he’s already broken his hand this summer and it’s hard to imagine Floyd having enough impact/consistency to elevate this short-handed group.
• Bears got 10 sacks last season from the combination of Willie Young, Pernell McPhee and Lamarr Houston. All three of those guys are on the flip sides of their careers but they are bonafide, professional pass rushers. They know how to get to the quarterback and finish. Where are they making up for those numbers? Aaron Lynch? Nope.
• Bears were ranked T-7 in sacks in 2017. Sacking the QB ten fewer times will land them in the bottom third of the league. It just feels like that’s where this unit is heading.