The Chicago Bears looked impressive in their Week 1 win over the Carolina Panthers — on offense. The defense, however, was another story entirely.
Chicago afforded the Panthers 473 total yards of offense on the way to 37 points.
“According to Sumer Sports, the #Bears pressured Bryce Young on 37% of his drop backs in the first half. Dennis Allen called blitzes on 42% of the passing plays,” Lorin Cox of “Locked on Bears” podcast posted to X during the game on Sunday, September 13. “Bears also have a missed tackle rate over 25% so far. Not great.”
Chicago finished the day with five quarterback hits and two sacks on 38 pass attempts by Panthers QBs over the course of the afternoon.
And while it won’t necessarily help all that much with regards to the 5.7 yards per attempt the Bears defense surrendered to Carolina’s run game across 22 carries, using the $5 million the team has in available salary cap space to add an edge-rusher to the fold should be imperative in the coming week.
Leonard Floyd Best Option for Bears to Improve Pass Rush Ahead of Week 2
Arguably the best option remaining in free agency after Week 1 is a player Chicago fans should remember well — Leonard Floyd, the former top-10 pick of the Bears in the 2016 NFL draft (No. 9 overall)
“The former Bear will turn 34 this season, and while a bit on the small side (6’5″, 240), he’s always been able to set the edge in the run game,” Lester A. Wiltfong Jr. of Windy City Gridiron wrote June 19. “He played in 15 games last year for the [Atlanta] Falcons (all starts) with 3.5 sacks.”
Floyd has tallied 70 sacks over the course of his 10-year professional career, which spans 153 regular season games (152 starts). That includes 48 sacks across a five-year stretch between 2020-24. He is also a former Super Bowl champion, capturing a ring with the Los Angeles Rams in 2021.
Spotrac projects Floyd’s market value at nearly $9 million on a new one-year deal, but given that he is still a free agent and one week of the season has already passed, Chicago should have a decent chance of inking Floyd at a considerably lower number — if the team is, in fact, interested in improving upon a pass-rush that has struggled mightily since head coach Ben Johnson arrived ahead of last season.
Bears QB Caleb Williams Calls Out Offense, Not Defense, for Sloppy Play in Big Win Over Panthers
Bears quarterback Caleb Williams was not critical of his defensive teammates after leading Chicago to a 59-37 road victory in Week 1.
He was, however, critical of himself and the rest of the offense.
“That’s who we want to be this week. We got to go clean up. We want to be truthers,” Willams said during his postgame press conference, per Chris Emma of The Score. “Obviously, this is going to be our kind of worst game. I know [the 59] points don’t necessarily show that — but execution, the blocking, the penalties, all these different things.”
Given Williams’ attitude, and that of the rest of the offense, after Chicago’s opening performance, GM Ryan Poles owes it to the locker room to add more help to the defensive side of the football.
The vast majority of analysts and reporters who pay any attention to the Bears have been talking about the pass-rush deficiency as a major issue all offseason long. It’s time for the franchise itself to start taking the problem more seriously.
Bears Can’t Afford to Wait on Reunion With Former Pass-Rusher After Panthers Outing