Is it fair to put all the blame for the Chicago Bears offensive woes on Dowell Loggains? That’s a debate that continues even to this day. Some feel the former coordinator was overmatched by his responsibilities. That he lacked the necessary feel for play calling or game planning. Others insist he was held back by the archaic designs of head coach John Fox.
Either way it was apparent Loggains lacked one particular trait that drove fans crazy. He couldn’t mix things up. The ongoing joke throughout the 2017 season was “Run, Run, Pass.” That’s because this was how so many series went for Chicago. They’d run the ball twice, try to pass and then punt. The lack of creativity did not reflect well on Loggains.
It also put rookie quarterback Mitch Trubisky in a tough spot. Asking him to constantly throw from third and long situations with his lack of experience led to a lot of sacks and other mistakes. The Bears didn’t do enough to give him easy throws and reads to get him in rhythm. That no doubt was one of the reasons they hired Matt Nagy as head coach.
It’s also a huge reason Nagy hired Mark Helfrich to replace Loggains.
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Mark Helfrich a master of misdirection at Oregon
The biggest claim to fame that Helfrich has at this point in his career was his direct hand in developing the dynamic offensive attack that made Oregon a national power from 2009 to 2015. Jeff Hughes of Da Bears Blog uncovered an interesting point from an old article that revealed what made it so effective back then.
It confused defenses.
“Oregon’s connection with zone-read option runs is well known. Quarterback Marcus Mariota (left) reads the defense, then decides whether to keep the ball or hand it off to a running back (or receiver).
The Ducks passing game is equally confusing for defenses. Mariota threw the ball 27 times during the first half of the Rose Bowl. All but five of those passes involved some sort of misdirection: a pump fake to a receiver, a designed quarterback rollout, a fake handoff to a teammate, or some combination of the three.
According to profootballfocus.com, Mariota used play action on 51 percent of his 372 passes during the regular season.”
The potential in Chicago may actually exceed Oregon
The 2014 Oregon offense was Helfrich’s masterpiece. It led the national both in total yards and total points. They went into the Rose Bowl against the defending champion Florida State Seminoles and proceeded to take them to the woodshed. FSU had absolutely no answers for the Ducks offense which basically did whatever it pleased.
The scariest part about this is Helfrich only had a couple years to do that with Mariota before he headed for the NFL. If he can produced the same environment in Chicago, he and Mitch Trubisky could terrorize the league for the next decade. Trubisky certainly isn’t a stranger to a spread-style system and he showed plenty of promise whenever allowed to do run-pass option plays.
Nagy certainly knew what he was doing when he made Helfrich the hire.
