Matt Nagy made a lot of great calls with his coaching staff this season. However, one of his most controversial was hiring Mark Helfrich to be the offensive coordinator. Though he did have prior experience at that job, it had been exclusively in college. He’s never worked against NFL defenses in his life. So bringing in somebody without that experience was risky.
Nagy explained that his goal was to bring in somebody “smarter” than him. Somebody who thought differently and could add more to the playbook the Bears head coach is trying to construct. It’s a nice idea in theory. However, there’s also a hidden danger to this. It could result in the Bears offense taking on certain tendencies of Helfrich that might not be ideal.
Three games into 2018, one of those tendencies has begun to surface. To date, Mitch Trubisky has thrown 104 passes this season. A total of 24 of them have gone behind the line of scrimmage in various versions of screen or swing passes. That makes up just over 23% of their passing plays this year. One would definitely call that a trend.
It’s not an accident dictated by opponents either. That is a classic staple of Helfrich.
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The Mark Helfrich screen love affair is hurting more than helping
Before anything, it’s important to ask. What is Helfrich’s fascination with running so many screens and horizontal passes? The simple answer is they worked. In college. As offensive coordinator and head coach at Oregon, their screen game was lethal at times. Get the ball out fast to a speedy receiver or running back in space and let him work.
Makes sense, right? There are just a couple problems with applying that offensive logic at the pro level. The first is a pragmatic part of the play’s execution. In order for it to work, it requires wide receivers who can get out in space and block, allowing the ball carrier the time to find the necessary lane. That’s a problem for the Bears.
They don’t have good blockers for the most part. Allen Robinson, Taylor Gabriel, and Trey Burton were never known for their blocking. They are pass-catching weapons. This would explain why the Bears have consistently struggled to find any sort of space when trying their various bubble screens.
None of those pass types the Bears called in Arizona went for longer than seven yards. More often they were stopped for short gains or even resulted in a turnover. This brings up the other part of the issue that Helfrich may not have accounted for.
NFL defenses are smarter, faster and more disciplined than college defenses
Let’s be honest. It’s easy to be an offensive coordinator in college football. Aside from a handful of exceptions, most of the defenses at that level are subpar. They lack speed. They lack discipline and they don’t often appreciate the value of fundamentals. A semi-sharp offensive mind can easily take advantage of that reality just like Helfrich did.
There is no such luxury in the NFL. Defenses are loaded with athletes everywhere. They’re filled with guys who have more than two or three years of experience, unlike college. That means they’ve seen just about everything there is to see and can read the keys for when it’s coming. Last but not least, they have top of the line coaches who get paid a lot of money to do everything in their power to stop you.
Playing a horizontal game at the professional level is a losing proposition for most offenses because the defenses are simply too smart and too fast. Only having the ideal personnel can make it work, which the Bears don’t have. Their persistence in trying is doing more harm than good at this point.
