Bear Digest

Bears hardly face a positional dilemma after two trades in two days

Who plays where is not really a problem for the Bears even though both Joe Thuney and Jonah Jackson play the same position.

Gene Chamberlain

Chiefs guard Joe Thuney sets to block for quarterback Patrick Mahomes against Cincinnati.
Chiefs guard Joe Thuney sets to block for quarterback Patrick Mahomes against Cincinnati. / Denny Medley-Imagn Images
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The Bear haven't actually admitted they've even made these two trades for linemen the last two days and none of it becomes official until the March 12 start of free agency and the beginning of the new league year.

Without saying it, this creates questions for some about details and specifically who is playing where, after they brought in left guard Joe Thuney and left guard Jonah Jackson.

There is, after all, only one left guard on the field.

Who plays left guard becomes a colossal no-brainer. It's not even close to the debate held over whether Tremaine Edmunds or T.J. Edwards would have the middle linebacker position and which the weakside position.

Thuney is your 800-pound gorilla joke. Where does the 800-pound gorilla sit? And the answer, of course, is anywhere he wants.

A four-time Pro Bowl guard and two-time All-Pro who has been in six Super Bowls, he's playing the position he wants. Thuney is such a team player and has always been lauded for this, so he would never take the high-handed approach. But it makes absolutely no sense to make him play right guard when he has been so good at left guard.

Thuney is not a left tackle and even though he played there in the Super Bowl last month he has only played the position in a regular season only 470 snaps, 389 of them last year due to the hamstring injury to Kansas City tackle D.J. Humphries. The Bears are not moving a 32-year-old guard out to tackle permanently when they can have him at left guard, where he has been 10,734 NFL plays and they already have a starting left tackle who is at least adequate.

Nor are they moving Thuney to center, where he has been at for all of 128 plays.

So where does this leave Jackson, who is going into his sixth season? The natural assumption by many is he becomes a center but this would be silly when he has only 131 plays there, 107 of them last year when he didn't play very well with the Rams after moving in free agency.

Jackson had no offseason work because of a knee injury rehab and only took center as starter at the last minute because the Rams were unsettled at the position, then did it without really having sufficient practice there.

Jackson played right guard and can settle in there, but he does have very little experience on the right side of the line, period. His 211 plays at right guard are barely more than the 131 he's had at center.

The Rams did use Jackson at right guard in the last game he played there in the regular season finale, a meaningless game while they rested starters. And he had the highest Pro Football Focus grade he has ever had at any position for any game in his career, a 91.8.

The Bears probably won't answer the question about where the two play when they finally have a press conference with the two after free agency begins.

"We'll put our best five on the field and sort out the positions later," is the familiar refrain about positions on the offensive line. It's so much garbage because not everyone can be a center and definitely not everyone can play tackle well.

The Bears do know they have two guards, one who excelled as a left guard and needs to play there. They have a potential rising star at right tackle in Darnell Wright and Braxton Jones at left tackle has been a darling of the analytics people for the last two years even while he hasn't exactly impressed Bears fans.

Finding a true center and not an All-Pro converted is the next step.

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.