Shane Waldron has been relieved of his duties and offensive passing game coordinator Thomas Brown has been promoted to offensive coordinator.https://t.co/KVd0Innr3d

— Chicago Bears (@ChicagoBears) November 12, 2024

Audibles used to be reserved for just links involving the Chicago Bears, but today we’ll branch out beyond the Bears, to the entire league.

• After two games, fans wanted Shane Waldron fires and D’Andre Swift stoned to death. The great Adam Jahns gave the Bears OC proper credit for his excellent work through six games. Kevin Fishbain adds his praise for the running back. I’ve been arguing for years that the first month of the NFL season is no longer relevant when it comes to team form. There is no preseason, and camp is a joke. September is simply about figuring out what your club is and stacking wins.
• Brad Biggs does a nice job contextualizing the Chicago Bears as they come out of their bye week. There are three major tests approaching: continuing Caleb’s growth, beating the weaker teams, and holding their own against the best division in football by a wide margin.
• Mary Kay Cabot on a potential Myles Garrett trade: “Of course, a team can never say never when it comes to trades, and they’d probably at least answer the phone. But unless someone makes them a blockbuster offer that they can’t refuse, it’s not in the cards to part with one of the premier players in the history of the club.”
• Fun interview on Da Site, with Rome Odunze revealing to Lauren Screeden how he got his name.
• Kevin Warren continues to argue for a new stadium on the lakefront, and taxpayer funding will be on the ballot this November. Any citizen endorsing taxpayer money for a sports facility has lost the plot entirely. Every NFL franchise is worth (at minimum) $4 billion, and yet every time a new building is “required” these billionaires walk into the public square, palms facing the sky.

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The offseason is winding down as we are now firmly in training camp and shifting into preseason mode, but before the real games start I want to sneak one last series examining part of the roster to give us a better sense of what to expect in the 2024 season.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time looking at the offense in the last few months, as we’ve learned together about new OC Shane Waldron, the WRs, the TEs, and expectations for rookies Caleb Williams and Rome Odunze. However, I’ve completely ignored the offensive line, and want to spend a little time this week focusing on the big boys up front who will be tasked with protecting the quarterback and opening lanes in the run game.

We already looked at the interior yesterday, and will shift gears to the tackles today.

Side note: If you read yesterday’s article, this one will follow the exact same format and have identical table setup, so hopefully the familiarity makes digesting all of the data a little easier. 

Pass Protection

Let’s start by examining pass protection, which is the most important part of an offensive lineman’s job. The Bears have two locked in starters in Darnell Wright, who are both back from 2023. The table below shows how they help up protecting the passer compared to 68 OTs (2.1/team, so roughly starters) around the NFL with 300+ pass blocking snaps. A few quick notes:

• All data is from Pro Football Focus (PFF).
• True pass sets are intended to remove plays designed to minimize the pass rush and make the OL’s job easier, such as screens, play action, and rollout.
• Pass blocking efficiency measures overall pressure allowed, but weights sacks more heavily than other pressures. A higher number is better.
• In a 68 player sample, 34th would be the middle rank, while cells highlighted in green indicate they ranked in the top 25% (top 17) and red indicates the bottom 25% (52nd or worse).
• Two other players are also included, though they don’t have ranks indicated because they did not qualify with 300+ pass blocking snaps in 2023:
  • Larry Borom had 225 pass blocking snaps for the Bears last year, and will be competing to keep his role as the swing tackle in 2024.
  • Borom’s main competition is Matt Pryor, who didn’t play much in 2023 but had a combined 583 pass blocking snaps across 2021-22, which are included here.

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This is the 2nd installment of a 4-part series looking at Chicago TEs Cole Kmet and Gerald Everett. In part one, we explored how each player has been used in the past, and how this might match up with the way offensive coordinator Shane Waldron has deployed his tight ends. Today, we’re going to focus on blocking, which is an often overlooked part of a tight ends’ role.

Pass Blocking

Let’s start by looking at how frequently and effectively Chicago’s TEs pass blocked. The table below shows some basic pass blocking stats from Pro Football Focus (PFF) for Kmet and Everett in 2023, and their rank compared to 45 NFL TEs with at least 25 pass blocking snaps. Ranks in the top 25% are highlighted in green, while those in the bottom 25% are highlighted in red.

A brief explanation of some of the stats:

• Pass Block % is the % of pass plays where a player is on the field and is asked to block instead of running a route.
• Pass Block Efficiency is a PFF metric that “measures pressure allowed on a per snap basis with a weighting towards sacks.” A higher number is better.

Side note: sorry if there are formatting issues for the tables. You can view them in full by clicking on them. 

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After handing Cole Kmet a big extension last offseason and signing Gerald Everett to a solid contract in free agency this year, the Bears have two starting-caliber tight ends on the roster. Both players were heavily utilized in the passing game in 2023, which can be seen in the table below showing their basic receiving production, with ranks compared to other NFL TEs in parentheses.

Kmet was among the top 10 TEs in every stat, while Everett generally ranked in the 15-25 range, which would put him as roughly an average to below average starter. Their pay checks also reflect the expectation that both players are expected to play starting-type roles, as they currently rank 9th (Kmet) and 21st (Everett) among TEs in average yearly salary. Since both players will be playing important roles in Chicago’s offense in 2024, this week’s series is going to take a detailed look at how each of them could be useful. We’ll split this into four parts:

• Part 1:
  • How new OC Shane Waldron has utilized his TE in the past
  • How this compares to Kmet and Everett’s usage
• Part 2:
  • How frequently and effectively they blocked
• Part 3:
  • How efficient they were overall as pass catchers
  • How they performed against man and zone coverage
  • How frequently and efficiently they were targeted at different depths of the field
• Part 4:
  • 3rd and 4th down production
  • Red zone usage
  • How frequently and efficiently they produced in the slot

Waldron TE Usage

Let’s start with a look at how new offensive coordinator Shane Waldron used his tight ends during his 3 seasons in Seattle. The table below shows information about how much his tight ends played, how frequently they were targeted in the passing game, and where they lined up. TE1-TE3 status for each season is based on total snap counts, and alignment information is pulled from Pro Football Focus (PFF).

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In addition to adding 5 new starters on offense this offseason, the Bears fired offensive coordinator Luke Getsy and replaced him with Shane Waldron, who spent the previous 3 years holding the same position in Seattle.

In order to better understand what Chicago’s offense might look like in 2024, I’ve been digging into data about Waldron’s offenses at his last stop. I looked at down and distance play calling tendencies yesterday, and today want to explore personnel and formation trends.

Today’s data comes from Sumer Sports, which only has information for 2022 and 2023, so nothing from Waldron’s 1st season in Seattle will be included.

Personnel Groupings

Let’s start by looking at common personnel groupings, which looks solely at the listed position of players on the field and not where they are lined up. These groupings are commonly listed by 2 numbers, where the 1st is the number of running backs and the 2nd is the number of tight ends. Since teams play 5 skill position players at a time, the number of wide receivers is then implied. The 2 most common groupings are 11 (1 RB, 1 TE, 3 WR) and 12 (1 RB, 2 TE, 2 WR).

The table below shows how frequently the Seahawks and Bears used and passed out of each grouping on 1st-2nd down in 2023, along with their ranks compared to the rest of the NFL. Values in the top 25% are highlighted in green, while those in the bottom 25% are red. Seattle’s data from 2022 is included as well for comparison.

(side note: if the table gets cut off, click on it to view the full table in a new screen)

A few thoughts:

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The Bears have seen a massive changeover in offensive personnel this offseason. QB Justin Fields, RB D’Onta Foreman, WR Darnell Mooney, WR Equanimeous St. Brown, TE Robert Tonyan, IOL Cody Whitehair, and IOL Lucas Patrick, who combined to account for over 4100 offensive snaps in 2023, are no longer on the roster.

The Bears have replaced those players with QB Caleb Williams, RB D’Andre Swift, WR Keenan Allen, WR Rome Odunze, TE Gerald Everett, IOL Ryan Bates, and IOL Coleman Shelton. It’s safe to say these players are a significant net upgrade, and the Bears invested heavily (draft picks 1, 9, and 144 and $45M in salary cap spending on the veterans) to make sure that would be the case.

In addition to changing over the players, the Bears brought in a new offensive coaching staff, and offensive coordinator Shane Waldron will be tasked with turning this talent into a cohesive and effective unit. Since Waldron spent three years as the play caller in Seattle, this week I want to dig into his data to see what we can learn that might translate to Chicago. I am going to focus mostly on what his play calling tendencies were and less on how effective the offense was, because effectiveness will depend significantly on personnel and will be entirely different in Chicago.

We’ll start today by looking at Waldron’s down and distance trends, and will examine personnel groupings tomorrow.

1st down

Let’s start with examining what Waldron liked to do on 1st down. The table below shows how often Seattle called a passing play vs. a running play, how many of their passes went deep down the field (15+ yards past the line of scrimmage in the air), and how many of their runs were inside the tackles. A few quick notes:

• To remove game situation as much as possible, I only looked at plays between the 20s in the first three quarters. This is a look at what Waldron liked to do in fairly neutral situations. These same criteria will apply to all data in this article.
• I looked at Seattle for 2021, 2022, and 2023 so we could see what trends were consistent from year to year and what ones changed. This might give hints as to what Waldron will likely keep vs. what might shift depending on personnel.
• I also showed what Chicago looked like in 2023, so we can get a general idea of how things might change compared to what we saw last year.
• To put all these numbers in context, I provided the high, average, and low values for all 32 NFL teams in 2023, and where the 2023 Bears and Seahawks ranked in each category. Values in the top 25% are highlighted in green, while those in the bottom 25% are highlighted in red.
• All data comes from Pro Football Reference’s game play finder.

A few thoughts:

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If Luke Getsy’s offense was like a finely-tuned orchestra, with every aspect of each play meticulously planned & each game script dependent on all 11 offensive players consistently doing their jobs, Shane Waldron’s offense is more like a jazz band.

“Here’s a general idea of what you’re doing, but at the end of the day go be a football player.”

It’s a fun pivot towards an offensive coordinator who empowers his best players to be field-tilters & difference-makers, but don’t let the idea of simplicity fool you — Waldron uses concepts like motion & formation shifts to his players’ advantage well. Below I walk you through a nice example of Waldron baiting out Cincinnati’s 3-by-1 defensive check before then motioning out of that 3-by-1 and forcing plenty of defensive communication, which both allows the Seahawks to identify a key Bengals’ check early in the game while still exploiting the defense and picking up a first down.

It’s a pretty design. Give it a look.

https://twitter.com/robertkschmitz/status/1757886362097754301

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Welcome, Shane Waldron!

Our fans are completely sane.

Fair treatment awaits!