How Bears Could Be Mimicking Wrong Super Bowl Team
A serious look at the matchup in Sunday's Super Bowl suggests the Chicago Bears are taking the wrong path.
They're mimicking the wrong team.
The Andy Reid influence on Matt Nagy makes it likely, even essential the Bears follow the Kansas City model for building an explosive offense. Yet, an honest assessment of the talent available to the Bears and Nagy indicates they'd be much closer to making a Super Bowl by imitating the 49ers' success.
When Reid was about to come to Chicago and play the Bears he spoke with Chicago media in a conference call and talked about the quarterback position, the one spot the Bears cannot imitate with the Chiefs when they don't have someone of Patrick Mahomes' abilities.
"Even before Pat, I was blessed to have Alex Smith," Reid said. "With Alex, we went back and pulled out some of the things he did in college that we knew he could fall off a log doing with his eyes closed, really. We pulled some of those things out.
"And then Alex kind of coached us up on what he could handle and what he liked and didn’t like. Not handle, but really what he liked and didn’t like. And we just started building it that way."
Reid has seen what the Bears have been doing with Mitchell Trubisky.
"Gbut just like Matt is doing with Mitch, you kind of build it around your guy and what your guy likes and is comfortable with," Reid said. "And then you give him little things that you keep making him better with and they can keep growing. That’s kind of what we’ve done with Pat."
The trouble is, the Bears haven't really done this. Perhaps they will with new offensive coaches in place like Bill Lazor, John DeFilippo and with Dave Ragone in a new role coordinating the passing game.
What the Bears did last year seemed to be design one game plan around what Trubisky liked or could execute, and then another day around what Nagy had done with the Chiefs. It didn't work for Trubisky.
Even if it worked better, it wouldn't be similar to what the Chiefs are doing. Mahomes just makes too many throws or plays of all sorts based on nothing in the game plan but on his sheer brilliance.
The Bears can't imitate this.
What they can get to fairly fast is the model the 49ers have followed.
They already have a defense at the same level San Francisco has. When entirely healthy, they might even be better.
The possibility of changes at cornerback and inside linebacker due to free agency or from Prince Amukamara being cut for cap purposes might drop the quality down some, but they still would remain close to dominant defensively.
Building a running game would be much easier and faster to do for the Bears to imitate not necessarily the way the 49ers control the ball and clock, but to do it in another way. They can use different style runs based more on the inside zone blocking schemes they run. The 49ers are more of a stretch and outside zone running team.
David Montgomery looks capable of this. It might take drafting another capable running back or acquiring one because the need is for another back with a speed/power combination to remove some of Montgomery's workload.
It's going to take some offensive line personnel change.
When Juan Castillo came to Baltimore in 2013 the Ravens finished 30th in rushing. They swapped out three offensive line spots by opening day of the next year and rose to eighth in rushing, then led the league in 2015.
When Castillo came to Buffalo, there was no need to change up the line because they were already tops in the league in rushing. They finished sixth and ninth the next two years.
So it's evident, at least, that Castillo can coach an effective running game and it's easier to come up with a few linemen in the draft or one in free agency by far than it is to pull a quarterback like Mahomes out of the clear blue.
With better tight end play from Trey Burton or a new player, the Bears could easily get back to running the ball with authority in one year's time.
It's the ground game emphasis, with a ball-control passing game like San Francisco uses that could allow the Bears to transition back to contender status far faster than standing around hoping a quarterback like Mahomes falls into their laps. He fell there once, and after they got Trubisky they can't count on it happening again.
The difference for the Bears is the running game would take a different form than the one the 49er use. Their attack uses more of the inside zone blocking scheme like the Chiefs while the 49ers are using stretch plays and outside zone blocking or bootlegs. You can get an effective running game for ball control from either. It's been done.
The Bears have to borrow concepts from both teams in Super Bowl LIV to get to where they want to be.
Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven
