Probably the biggest addition new head coach Ben Johnson made to the Chicago Bears staff was his defensive coordinator, Dennis Allen. The man brings plenty of pedigree with him as a two-time former head coach who has produced five top-10 defenses since 2011. His best work came in New Orleans, where he helped return the team to the status of Super Bowl contenders in the late 2010s. While his stint as head coach didn’t end well there, almost everybody around the league believes he has a bright future as a defensive coordinator. That is why Johnson reached out to him at the end of December.
Allen met with the media for the first time on Thursday. He was asked about how things would go with him running the defense moving forward. One thing was made crystal clear from the start. Don’t expect the Bears to sit back and let offenses dictate the tempo anymore.
“We want to be an attacking, aggressive style of defense. We want to take the fight to the offense and not let the offense dictate the tempo to us. We’re going to be aggressive, we’re going to challenge everything, we’re going to play the game the right way, we’re going to play a tough, physical brand of football, I think the brand of football you come to expect at the Chicago Bears.”
The numbers back up Dennis Allen.
Blitz percentage became an official stat seven years ago. Throughout his time in New Orleans as defensive coordinator between 2018 and 2021, he blitzed on 28.27% of the plays. By contrast, Matt Eberflus blitzed an average of 22.85% during his two years running the defense for the Bears in 2023 and 2024. That pretty much guarantees there will be a considerable uptick in extra attackers each week. Expect cornerback Kyler Gordon to lead that charge. Allen loved using the nickel corner as a chess piece in blitz looks with the Saints. Gordon had nine pressures and a sack on 48 blitzes this season.
For an attacking defense to work, you also need good pass rushers. Chicago has a couple with Montez Sweat and Gervon Dexter, but they still lack a true dynamic presence on the line. It is safe to assume Dennis Allen will push to add another piece to the mix at some point between March and April. Once the Bears can start consistently pressuring opponents, their odds of winning games will go way up.
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Speaking of Montez Sweat, wtf happened to that guy in 2024?? Hopefully it was just a product of the coaching staff lacking the motivation on the players. Its hard to solely blame him seeing as most of the defense didn’t have a great year either. But this dude got paid we need more from him.
@citizen34 I sure hope (and expect) Johnson to be far more effective than Ditka ever was, but I totally agree with him bringing a level of accountability we haven’t seen since probably peak Lovie years (and even he was hit or miss at times). I’m even more excited about his apparent personal attention to detail when combined with that accountability. There’s a lot of coaches out there who I don’t think have the mental capacity to even stay on top of the details themselves, much less teach and enforce them.
This defensive philosophy should have been at least attempted, if not more formally operationalized, during that unholy, hideous 10-game losing streak. The potentially beneficial results of experimentation often lead to paradigm shifts during crisis situations.
The Bears defense only made minor changes at best during the last three months of the season. They kept basically to the passive defensive paradigm. Even the Bears last win had little to do with a new aggressive defensive strategy or philosophy. Hopefully Allen changes all of that in year 4 4 4 4 of the Poles rebuild.
Even though Ditka ended up becoming a huge ego-maniac, he was the person responsible for changing the mindset of the team and telling them if they didn’t work hard they were gone! And Buddy Ryan had unreal talent on that side of the ball, but Ditka let him do his thing and it worked. Maybe these gents will have the same style of coaching. I do think Ben is not going to keep any players that are undiciplined or don’t work on every play. You can go back and watch all of the Lions offensive plays and there are guys… Read more »
Sounds like we might have a Buddy Ryan clone in the house. Maybe Ben can be Ditka! Lol, Bring the Mack back and get another tackle the D would be set.