Usually, when a player and coach arrive at an organization at the same time, the player is scrutinized more than the coach. That isn’t the case with the Chicago Bears. While Caleb Williams might be a rookie, most agree he has performed admirably in difficult conditions. Offensive coordinator Shane Waldron hasn’t done a great job building the offense around his young quarterback. The offensive line looks disjointed. Running backs haven’t found enough lanes. Even the wide receivers struggle to get open.
Former defensive end Chris Long won two Super Bowls during his career. In that time, he played on teams that had some poorly constructed offenses and teams that had excellent offenses. He knows the difference. From what he sees in Chicago, he is unimpressed with Waldron and said as much on The Rich Eisen Show.
Shane Waldron didn’t seem to come in with a plan.
He doesn’t exactly know what he wants the Bears offense to be. That lack of identity leads to uncertainty and uncertainty leads to mistakes. Long pointed out that the Washington Commanders made sure to have a plan for Jayden Daniels when he arrived. They were going to run a quick-hitting offense to get the ball out of his hands, run the ball consistently, and let the rookie use his legs when necessary. It is simple, but the players embraced it from the start and now Washington is racking up points.
Last weekend against Los Angeles felt like the first time Shane Waldron actually knew what he wanted to do. The Bears committed to running the ball while having Williams focus on high-percentage passes meant to stay ahead of the chains. It didn’t yield big numbers, but it ensured a victory. If this is how Waldron keeps things moving forward, you can at least say he stuck with what works. Whether that yields bigger results down the line is another story.
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What is holding Caleb Williams back is the sad and deeply flawed belief by Ryan Poles that this offensive line was good enough. Period. Williams is not the problem, and Waldron is only a part of the issue. When you cannot block, when the majority of your OL is getting penalties, missing assignments, and throwing Ole’ blocks at air, even Bill Walsh couldn’t call a successful offense. Part of the problem is clearly coaching. The Bears too often don’t know their assignments. They don’t help each other too often for it all to be just coincidence. Clearly they aren’t playing… Read more »
As I said the defense and special teams will carry the load until Caleb and the offense Jell, hopefully before the first bye week. Believe I mentioned something about Tory flipping the field and winning games with just his leg.
Again, it’s still too early to pass judgement. A lot of new pieces coming together. They’re moving in the right direction. Stay patient.
@Slip Knotz – with respect, I think you misheard. The Bears IOL is playing a new style of blocking, called inside out zone. On odd man fronts, the center and left guard face each other and play paddy cakes, and the right guard does a reach block on the left defensive end. On even man fronts, they all fall backwards on the snap landing on their butts to confuse the opponent. Or at least that’s what it looked like in the second and third game.
A few people mentioned Kramer blocking on the goal line. Has anyone mentioned that the Bears were running an I-formation sometimes against the Rams? This is something that was bugging me the first 3 games. It didn’t seem like the RB’s, especially Roschon should be running from a shotgun standstill position. I was so excited to see it that I didn’t even notice who was the fullback the first time they ran it. So I think I complained about the vanilla shotgun on a Tuesday maybe. And they were obviously already addressing it as it was installed into Sunday’s game… Read more »