Bears D Looking For Game Changers

Washington

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/football/bears/ct-spt-bears-eddie-jackson-akiem-hicks-defense-20180731-story.html#nt=oft02a-1gp2

Important trivia question: Name the last Bears defensive player to be named to the Pro Bowl. Please hold your answers while we loop in your current Bears defenders for their guesses.

Defensive end Akiem Hicks, come on down. Your answer please?

“Brian Urlacher.”

Good guess. And timely too. But nope.

“(Charles) Tillman?”

Wrong.

“Oh (expletive)! Was it Julius Peppers?”

Sorry, Akiem.

We’ve got to move on to safety Eddie Jackson.

“Ooooooh, man,” Jackson says. “Uhhhh. It wasn’t Brian Urlacher, right? It couldn’t have been that long ago.”

Not Urlacher. But it has been a while.

“Was it Peanut?”

It wasn’t.

Thanks for playing, Eddie.

Prince Amukamara, can you rescue us here? Last Bears defender to make the Pro Bowl. Go.

“Tillman? Wait. No, no, no, no. It was Tim Jennings.”

Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.

It was Tim Jennings. At the end of the 2013 season.

Chew on that.

“It’s been that long?” Jackson says. “For real? We’ve got to break that. We’ve got to break that soon.”

So that brings us to the 2018 Bears, a seemingly up-and-coming team that is going to need its defense to provide stability as a new-look offense takes shape. But isn’t this defense, with Vic Fangio now in his fourth season as coordinator, capable of offering more than stability? Can’t this group aim to make the leap from good to great? At some point, shouldn’t the team’s media relations staff be busy producing promotional Pro Bowl pamphlets for the team’s emerging stars?

“Last year, we limited big plays,” Amukamara says. “We were solid overall. But the one thing maybe that’s missing is takeaways.”

Now might be an appropriate time to point out that, in many league circles, the Bears defense is seen as a solid and respectable bunch but one that lacks established game-changers. Don’t shoot the messenger. That’s just the impression — that these Bears don’t have a defender who disrupts the sleep patterns of opposing offensive coordinators. And that’s part of what distinguishes a great defense from a good one.

“This game is all about production,” Amukamara says. “Right now, I suppose, if you look at our defense, there’s nothing too striking. But once we put it on film, any impression outsiders have of us will get erased. That’s what I love about the NFL. Every year, you’ve got to erase what you did last year and prove who you are this year.”

On that front, the Bears insist, the list of prospects positioned for a big year in 2018 is growing. Start with Hicks, who deserved Pro Bowl consideration last season and was singled out by coach Matt Nagy last week for his energy up front. “Akiem’s a freaking monster,” Amukamara says. “He just is. He creates so much disruption.”

Amukamara also offers up his love for fellow cornerback Kyle Fuller, who had a bounce-back season in 2017 and is off to a fast start at training camp. And the list doesn’t stop there. Amukamara also lists Jackson, Adrian Amos, Eddie Goldman, Leonard Floyd and Danny Trevathan as players who could emerge on the league’s radar.

Rookie Roquan Smith comes with All-Pro potential too — when he finally signs and gets to work at practice. And Nagy also praises Amukamara’s confidence and veteran savvy.

So now the challenge is issued. It’s not enough for the Bears to merely identify those potential playmakers on defense. It’s time to establish the game-changers, the nucleus of three or four guys who deliver big contributions to swing games consistently.

Think back to the last Bears playoff team, the division champions from 2010. There was Urlacher and Tillman plus Peppers and Lance Briggs and Tommie Harris. Now that defense had teeth.

“We want to model ourselves after that defense’s intensity and the flair and fire they brought to the game,” Amukamara says.

Adds Jackson: “There’s a chemistry we have. And there’s a mindset right now. It’s about being physical and staying aggressive. We’re going to come out and hit you in your mouth. It’s about playing fast and physical, that old Chicago Bears-style football.”

There’s a glimmer in Jackson’s eye as he speaks. Because he knows what it’s like to play on a defense with so much talent and tenacity. At Alabama, the safety couldn’t move three feet in his huddle without bumping into a future draft pick or NFL starter. He singles out the Crimson Tide’s 2015 defense as the best he ever played for, a group that propelled a run to the national championship game. The roll call of that bunch is eye-popping.

Reuben Foster. Jonathan Allen. Minkah Fitzpatrick.

“Ronnie Harrison,” Jackson continues. “Marlon Humphrey. Dalvin Tomlinson. D.J. Pettway. Jarran Reed. A’Shawn Robinson. I mean, man. It was crazy”

At some point, Jackson said, the collective tenacity became impossible to contain.

“We had a mindset to always throw the first blow. It’s like you feed off each other. The D-line gets hype. We get it rolling in the secondary after them. Now we’re all making plays and you’re feeding off that.”

A similar feeding frenzy, Jackson contends, is possible in Chicago. This season.

Nagy wants the Bears to establish a physical identity. Right away. He also wants his defense to be at the top of the league in takeaways by season’s end. There’s a think-big mentality that has been obvious in the early stages of training camp.

But the next step requires more than thinking big. It requires producing. And winning. And replacing Tim Jennings as the answer to that trivia question.

dwiederer@chicagotribune.com
 

TheWinman

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Another excellent original topic. Pay attention Dezbears!!!!! Yeah, we need game changers on D more than anything. The names listed all provide some hope, but it's just hope
 

Washington

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I agree and have said it in other threads that the team as a whole has lots of "nice" players, "good" players, but lacks true difference makers that teams need to scheme for. This article says a lot of the same. Now the homers here will disagree and say the team is loaded with these difference makers but the team's record proves otherwise.

The potential is there for many of our young players on both sides of the ball. Right after the draft, I predicted Smith would be Pace's 1st draft pick selected to the Pro Bowl. The team better sign him soon!
 

gallagher

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One pick away from aaron Donald....

Honestly, that forever solidified my acceptance that sometimes, you gotta trade up to get your guy, even if it is only one pick up.

However, another thing to chew on... Donald is a real game changer. Would he have dominated for us in a way that Trestman wouldn't have been fired?
 

iueyedoc

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Heard the Bears have a guy they think can be a game changer, but they are afraid they won't be able to cut him without pay if he hits a guy with his helmet., so they are passing on him for now.
 

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