What to Expect Under Pagano

It wouldn't surprise me to see the Bears' defense improve under Pagano. The big strength of the 3-4 is that you can provide many more exotic looks and weird blitzes than you can from the 4-3. In a way, Fangio's philosophy of fairly vanilla DL and blitzing negated one of the greatest inherent advantages to his defense.

I said it last week, and I'll say it again: One of the greatest beneficiaries of Parkey's failure was Fangio, who never had to answer difficult questions about why he refused to dial up enough pressure to, if nothing else, disrupt the timing of the Eagles passing game.

This group allowed 42 yards rushing per game. You cant duplicate that. It was a special year with many turnovers mixed in. Pagano should bring more blitzes but that is gonna give up some yards. Looking forward to seeing how he coaches up the line. This team is also built for the zone so seeing a bunch of man coverage is gonna be neat or make me pull my hair out I guess?

MarylandBear111 said:

This group allowed 42 yards rushing per game. You cant duplicate that. It was a special year with many turnovers mixed in. Pagano should bring more blitzes but that is gonna give up some yards. Looking forward to seeing how he coaches up the line. This team is also built for the zone so seeing a bunch of man coverage is gonna be neat or make me pull my hair out I guess?

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Bears gave up 80 ypg rushing.

The NFL is ABSOLUTELY NOT full of field generals at the QB position. Brees, Brady and Rivers are the only true field generals left in the NFL. Most QBs depend on getting the right call from the sidelines and executing within the call with minimal adjustments. Motioning players in or out of the backfield depending on the look. This is very basic as far as responsibilities go and is the minimum as far as field generals go.

The first thing a QB does after identifying the "mike" backer is read the safeties. With 3 safeties on the field it's going to take an extra second for many of the modern QBs to diagnose the coverages and they also might stumble in their blocking assignments due to not identifying a blitzer.

If this is the way Pagano calls his game the biggest beneficiary would obviously be Khalil Mack. When you get a reputation for using exotic blitzes and are successful at it, it's harder to assign vanilla blocking schemes to negate the most elite pass rushers.

This defense has tons of talent outside of Mack... Fuller, Jackson, Hicks, Goldman, and Trevathan have shown they aren't flukes with their consistent play. Smith, Floyd, Amukamara, and Amos all played at a higher level down the stretch. Callahan looked like the premier slot corner until his injury happened and he should recover and hopefully get resigned.

The only place we aren't sure about is our 3-4 defensive end opposite Hicks and next to Goldman. While RRH played well he was surrounded by some special talent. Nichols and RRH should be battling for time to see who the starter is.

PERSPECTIVE

dennehy said:

Bears gave up 80 ypg rushing.

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We have a deep rotation of talent on the DL that should get better with young guys like Nichols taking a step forward.

Honestly, the biggest advantage the defense might have next year is Nagy balancing the offense and mixing in the run better. I can see this offense eating clock with long drives.


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dennehy said:

Bears gave up 80 ypg rushing.

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My mistake. I thought I saw it was 42.

MarylandBear111 said:

My mistake. I thought I saw it was 42.

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No biggie, I think 42 would be an all time record or close to it.

dennehy said:

No biggie, I think 42 would be an all time record or close to it.

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Pro football reference has the last game at 42.0
50.7 for last 3 games and 77.8 for the season.

42.0 would be a record me thinks

i like that pagano likely brings more creative fronts to this defense...hicks is a beast and having him all over the line instead of at just the 3tech is an advantage, it also creatives more chaos for oline's to make adjustments. I'd like to see some wide 9 used as well, especially on passing downs with hicks and rrh handling the inside, floyd could see some benefit as that speed rusher.

Dime - not sure this will turn out so well...do you take trevathan or smith off and replace him with a 4th string cb or 3rd string safety? Our depth chart for next year has the 4th string CB being tolliver and our 3rd string safety being DHC? Hopefully Pagano reviews all the film and adjusts to using more nickel instead of dime...as both trevathan and smith are relative studs in coverage.