November 30, 2020: Defense of the Defense

If the Bears scored 27 points per game, they would have been undefeated coming into Sunday night’s game at Lambeau. That would make them the 11th highest scoring team in the league; maybe that’s a stupid place to start. If they scored 25 points per game, they would have been 8-2 before their matchup with the Packers; that would make them the 17th highest scoring team in the league… or essentially right in the middle. Sure, the defense played like crap last night in Green Bay, but for the rest of the season, they had been solid. I’m here today in defense of the defense.

It’s not their fault, period. We can blame them for last night; we can take closer looks at certain players, and we will, but overall they are not the reason the Bears are where they are. They are not the problem. This defense is solid. One bad game does not make them suck.

Let’s start with the obvious. The Bears miss their DTs. We forget about Eddie Goldman; I find it strange that we haven’t heard anything else about him after he decided not to play because of COVID. There are a total of 66 players, or just over one full team roster, that opted out across the NFL. Anybody remembering how good Eddie was, knew how this would hurt us. Throw in an injury to Hicks… well, that’s a pretty big thing to overcome. They are after all the 6th and 7th highest paid players on the roster. But no excuses right? Roquan has been really good. Yeah, he missed a tackle yesterday, and has missed a few over the season, but he’s pretty reliable. Mack has been good. He’s not been Hall of Fame good, dealing with a bit more double teams on top of the holding calls that aren’t called against his opponent this year, but he’s still there. He makes a ton of money, but I still think those throwing out his name as a trade chip are dumb. The 2 DTs, Roquan and Mack should be here. The secondary has been good too. Again, not looking at last night, Fuller has been good; worth his contract good? Close. Jaylon has been promising for a rookie. Gipson was a nice pickup too actually. Buster Skrine is a decent corner, you just can’t put him on the other team’s best WR. He can do really well against a team’s 2nd and better yet, 3rd WR. Maybe not worth his cap hit, but that’s nowhere near the worst of it.

Eddie Jackson & Robert Quinn (who?) sit at the top of the list. I’m not sure how we get out of these $14M/year average deals through 2025, but we need to. Eddie has made a business decision not to tackle; it’s pretty clear. Without the big plays, he’s average at best, definitely not worth his pay. Quinn… my God… if you want to rank the worst free agent acquisitions of the year, he may be on top of the list. Trevathan has had his moments, both good and bad, but I’m pretty sure everybody can agree we kept the wrong guy here too. You see what Kwiatkowski is doing with Oakland? And oh yeah, he has almost the same exact salary as Danny T. Add another check to the wrong side of the ledger for Ryan Pace. One last thing; how we feeling about Chuck Pagano? Again, the defense has been solid, reliable outside of this game, but the pressure that was supposed to come with Pagano hasn’t been there. Another side effect of missing DTs???

None of these big name, big money defenders are coming off the books next year; Gipson will be off the books but I believe he is the cheapest of the starters. How will we create cap space on the defensive side of the ball to beef up our offensive line? I don’t trust Pace to do it; just another reason why he should not be back. If there’s anybody who can figure out a way to shed some of these bad deals, come on down. There will be some money freed up on offense… along with more bad dollars on the books. Let’s look at that next.