NOTE: Robert and I intended to start doing our weekly Spaces sessions on Twitter a few weeks back, but I have been battling one of the worst bronchial infections of my life. I’m finally returning to normal existence, and we’ll be live this Saturday (3/23) at 1 PM ET. A lot to talk about. 

Thoughts on what has transpired in the early days of free agency, starting in Chicago.

• Do I believe Ryan Poles had second or third-round offers on the table for Justin Fields? No, I do not. If you have followed my commentary on the Fields trade market, you know that I’ve been consistent in my reporting: there has been no Fields market. If a second-round pick had been on the table, Poles would have absolutely jumped at the opportunity. This revisionist take on the market, created by the Fields camp, is an attempt to save face, to pretend his journey to Pittsburgh was self-directed. Atlanta didn’t want him. Sean Payton doesn’t think he’s very good. Minnesota preferred Sam Darnold. As we close the book on the Justin Fields era in Chicago, it’s time to be honest. He was an underwhelming performer and the league recognized that.
• The Keenan Allen acquisition should have no influence on Poles’ draft strategy. Allen is going to be 32 years old this season. And while he is coming off his best year, the Bears can’t expect more than 2-3 seasons from him at a top-line performer. If these three wide receiving prospects – Harrison, Nabers, Odunze – are as good as many believe, the Bears shouldn’t hesitate to stand pat at number nine and bring one of them to Chicago. Always. Be. Adding. Weapons.
• The center position is still intriguing as we look ahead to 2024. Ryan Bates is a $4 million player. That’s not backup money, especially on the interior of the offensive line. It’ll be surprising if Bates is not one of the five starting linemen in September, and I think that position is going to be center.

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It’s Mini-Bye week in Chicago! With that in mind, let’s check in on the 2023 Bears rookie class — today, we’ll do the first & second round players, then tomorrow we’ll cover the rest of the class.

Darnell Wright:

• Overall: In my opinion, Wright has been about as good as you can ask a rookie tackle to be. He’s displayed natural power in his hands both as a run and a pass blocker, but it’s been his pass-blocking that’s stood out through 5 games so far. Wright is often left on an island with little to no help and fends for himself nicely — he’s been beaten at least once or twice in every game he’s played in, but that’s all part of playing tackle as a rookie.
  • The key is that he bounces back — getting beaten happens at tackle, but he doesn’t let bad reps snowball. Montez Sweat beat him early in Washington (just like Rashan Gary beat him early in Week 1) but he adjusted his kick-step in later reps and held Sweat off as the game wore on. I love seeing that from a young-gun.
• Where he’s surprised me: Wright is fast when he’s run-blocking on the move, which I didn’t expect based on his Tennessee film. That WR conditioning test clearly paid off.
• Improvement area: Wright’s kick-step can be sluggish off the snap, making him vulnerable to rushers that can bend the edge with speed. Players like Montez Sweat, Rashan Gary, Aiden Hutchinson and others will give him trouble until this is resolved, but I doubt this problem will persist for long. If the issue is still present closer to Week 11, we’ll take a deeper look.

Gervon Dexter Sr:

• Overall: So far Dexter has looked more raw than I expected him to at the NFL level, and my expectations weren’t particularly high for his rookie year — his Florida film showed a bully with the brawn to take on anybody, but NFL OL are taking advantage of Gervon’s naturally high pad level and have stopped him in his tracks.
  • He clearly spent the preseason working on his get-off (which doesn’t appear to be an issue anymore), but now he’s got to find a way to apply his natural power to reps more often — if he can, he’ll impact many more reps.
• Where he’s surprised me: Dexter did a much better job of landing strong hands on his OL matchups early in reps against Washington, leading to some of his first pass rush wins of the season. You can see his power flash in reps like the two clips below (second one is a reply to the first, so click the link to see it).
• Improvement area: Beyond Dexter refining his fundamentals and finding way to lower his pad-level, right now Gervon Dexter has a funky quirk as a pass-rusher — I’m not convinced he can rush to his left. Even going back to Florida, he’s always preferred to attack towards his right-hand side or drive through his OL, and while he did attempt a few left-side rush attempts against Washington, those reps looked much less dangerous than many of his other rushes in the game.
  • This could be an offseason project, but keep an eye out — maybe Dexter surprises us.

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Happy Friday everyone! As we head into the Bears’ final preseason game, I want talk about the way we talk about Gervon Dexter Sr — many fans are way, way too fixated on his get-off, and I believeit’s a molehill that’s become a mountain.

Here’s Dexter’s first 10 snaps from the Colts game where I’ve put the moment of the snap in slow-motion — Dexter is never once the last man off the ball, and he even gets off the line first on a few plays. Yet despite Dexter getting off the line well, his play-to-play impact was still too inconsistent throughout this reel — why? Put simply, there are other growth areas within Dexter’s game that are much more important for his future success than simply firing off the ball quickly.

We are way, way too fixated on Gervon Dexter's get-off — it's a molehill that's become a mountain.

Here's Dexter's first 10 snaps from the Colts game where I've slowed the moment of the snap down — he's never once last off the ball, he's even first off in a few plays. It's a… pic.twitter.com/xFsojSeRKJ

— Robert Schmitz (@robertkschmitz) August 24, 2023

Dexter’s pad level & hand usage need to improve, and I’d like to see him apply & maintain his natural power within each step he takes. Dexter has a bad habit of standing up straight after he & his OL initially make contact and currently it’s hurting his ability to remain powerful as a play progresses.

He’s also clearly raw in his hand-placement, especially as a pass-rusher, but in the reel above we see good news in regards to his improvement — He’s clearly working on new pass-rush moves, including a cross-chop that you only see explosive 3Ts attempt to pull off. Perfecting rush moves takes time, but by mid-season I would hope that he’s found a groove with a go-to rush and can contribute in his rotational reps.

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Editor’s Note: In the future, we’ll make have a GameDay post and a Postgame post of some sort — it’s preseason for all of us, and those two articles totally slipped my mind. Thank you for bearing with us as we transition!

It’s official: The 2023 Chicago Bears are undefeated!

Joking aside, the Bears got their first taste of 2023 football as they took on the Tennessee Titans last Saturday and plenty of players showed out for Chicago as they did. The Bears’ offensive starters scored easily on their only two drives (which somehow still set Twitter aflame) and the defense recovered from giving up the opening touchdown to muster 8 sacks, 4 takeaways, and a pesky performance overall.

To break down everything that happened in one article would create an illegible beast, so in an effort to keep things clean we’re going to split the analysis across Monday and Tuesday — we’ll start today with the Defense and continue with the Offense tomorrow.

Editor’s Note: Check back with this article throughout the day — as I produce more All-22 cutups, I’ll update this article to include more analysis 

Saturday’s Standouts:

• Rookie CB Tyrique Stevenson had as impressive a debut as a rookie could have, especially given that the Bears played so much vanilla Cover 2 and Cover 3 that any outside CB would’ve struggled to shine. Last week on DBB we dove deep into Stevenson’s toolkit, and you could already see a notable improvement in his tackling form on Saturday — despite often needing to charge downhill and make tackles underneath, he completed every tackle he attempted, which is saying something when you end the day with 7 solo tackles!
  • Stevenson received a warm welcome to the NFL in only his first play, but I loved the resiliency he displayed throughout the rest of the half. He set the edge in the run game, he played sticky in limited man coverage reps, and gave Bears fans plenty to get excited about in his debut action. I love this kid & can’t wait to watch his growth.

Welcome to the NFL, Rookie!

The big gain that #Bears CB Tyrique Stevenson allowed came on a Titans mid-play adjustment — Stevenson blanketed his man early (even cutting in front for the ball) but never saw the WR's spin-to-space coming.

Better now than Week 1! pic.twitter.com/e7irvFdk2Z

— Robert Schmitz (@robertkschmitz) August 14, 2023

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I’m in the process of working up a Braxton Jones video that I hope to have ready by Monday — in the meantime, here’s a breakdown I threw together yesterday about a funky formation wrinkle Luke Getsy used to catch the Lions’ linebackers flat-footed on subsequent plays.

Formation gimmicks are fun, hopefully we see Getsy use offensive design to press the advantage more often in 2023.

Here's a fun design wrinkle from #Bears OC Luke Getsy — after a bootleg run for a 1st down, Getsy shifted LT Braxton Jones to the right side of the OL and thus caught the Lions' defense over-adjusting.

Turn your sound on and I'll break down how a little WR motion goes a long… pic.twitter.com/AaqjVAYE2v

— Robert Schmitz (@robertkschmitz) July 13, 2023

Extra Media

As we get closer to training camp, something tells me we’re going to hear the terms “1-Technique” and “3-Technique” thrown around a lot when discussing Gervon Dexter Sr and Zacch Pickens — in case you don’t know what those terms mean, I’ve got just the video for you! And if you do know what they mean, here’s a nice ~10 minute reel of defensive lineman dominating.

Check it out!

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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Darnell Wright, OT

and the interview…

Gervon Dexter, DT

and chatting…

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