RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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The Bears have seen worse — way worse — from their offense than this, so it’s not cause for alarm. But it is mildly concerning that quarterback Caleb Williams and his group backslid after a strong start to training camp.
Ever since they started practicing in pads Monday, the offense hasn’t quite looked right, and while some of that is bound to happen throughout the marathon of camp, the pre-snap hiccups are something the Bears thought they’d buried last season.
The upside is that, as usual, coach Ben Johnson’s staff isn’t sugarcoating or spinning it. The first step toward fixing a problem is being honest about where it stands, and these coaches don’t have any hesitation to call it out.
“We've taken a step back, honestly, in our pre-snap communication,” offensive coordinator Press Taylor said before practice Wednesday morning. “A lot of times just not being on the same page, not seeing something the same way, not communicating... It can expose you if you're not ready.”
Taylor mentioned snags in calling the play in the huddle, breaking the huddle and being disciplined at the line of scrimmage, where Johnson uses many shifts and motions that can lead to false starts or delay-of-game penalties if the offense isn’t sharp.
All of that was hammered to offensive players in a meeting Tuesday and the evening walk-through. Wednesday wasn’t really the day to show they’d fixed those issues since the team held a very short and light practice without pads, but the Bears will be full-go Thursday morning, and that will reveal a lot about the offense’s ability to regroup.
None of it has been as bad as it was last August, when the Bears embarrassed themselves at the Family Fest practice at Soldier Field. That was their 10th practice of camp, and it was such a disaster offensively that Johnson fired a warning shot to the team: “If it continues like that, we’re not going to win many games.”
It did, in fact, continue like that for quite a while. The Bears closed the preseason with an equally discouraging performance against the Chiefs, rife with errors and sloppiness, then sputtered to an 0-2 start in the regular season.
The Bears committed the fourth-most false starts (33) and illegal-formation penalties (five) last season, plus five delay-of-game penalties, according to NFLPenalties.com . Those do more damage than just a handful of yards. They can be drive wreckers by putting the team in second- or third-and-long.
Throughout training camp last year, Johnson was constantly on Williams about being too slow to get out of the huddle and not keeping the group in sync at the line of scrimmage. They’re much more on the same page now, but there have still been some slipups this week. And this was one element that should’ve looked good from the jump.
“He has the ability to elevate his play,” Taylor said of Williams. “We need just the consistency down in, down out, the communication in the huddle, out of the huddle, at the line. That’s something that will always be a continued process for Caleb.”
Johnson said this week there have been “way too many mistakes” and “little things like that start to accumulate,” but was evenhanded in his overall assessment that an increase in missteps was “probably normal with the volume [of plays] continuing to increase, yet it's not OK for us and we're going to nip that in the bud.”
The Bears still have more than a month to work out these glitches before their season opener at the Panthers, but they aren’t going to get to the more advanced concepts of Johnson’s offense if they’re still stumbling. And while he’s been measured and patience in his reactions so far, he’ll have no reservations about getting a lot louder if necessary.
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