Bear Digest

No Mystery Which Way Thomas Brown Takes His Bears Offense

Analysis: New Bears offensive coordinator Thomas Brown has already shown at Carolina what direction he'll take an offense, and it should be no surprise to anyone.
Gene Chamberlain|
Bears offensive coordinator Thomas Brown had a nice lean toward the running game while calling plays at Carolina.
Bears offensive coordinator Thomas Brown had a nice lean toward the running game while calling plays at Carolina. | Photo: Chicago Bears Video

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Chicago Bears

If you want to know what to expect as a play caller from new Bears offensive coordinator Thomas Brown, just remember his background.

The man was a running back.

While everyone wants to see Caleb Williams get the chance to open up the attack and get the ball downfield, the way he's going to do this is through the running game. Running more means successful play-action passing and the ball goes downfield.

It's apparent Brown realizes this, as well.

Although his play-calling experience is limited, what there was of it last year with Carolina showed he understands the importance of rushing attempts. It doesn't have to be rushing yards as much as rushing attempts.

It wasn't just that the Panthers averaged 27.8 rushing attempts with Brown calling plays to 23.8 when Frank Reich did it. Rather, it was the number of games when when Brown hit 30 yards per carry and also the trend in his play-calling that shows he realizes the need to run it to support the passing game and his own defense.

The Panthers reached 30 carries twice with Reich calling plays and had a couple of games below 20 carries.

When Brown took play calling for three games and the Panthers knocked off Houston last year, he didn't have a significant increase in rushing attempts. Then again, it was still Reich's offense and he'd only been given play-calling duties with his offensive-side head coach looking over his shoulder. They ran it only 22.7 times average for three games.

However, once Brown had total control of the offense after Reich's firing, with only former Bears special teams coordinator Chris Tabor above him as head coach, Brown was free to take the offense where he wanted.

First game, 32 runs. They hadn't put up 32 carries since the opener. Next three games: 34, 39 and 36 rushing attempts. They never had more than 32 carries under Reich.

The Panthers ran into troubles at season's end and were shut out in the final two games, as their rushing attempts declined.

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In six of the 10 games Brown called they had at least 28 rushing attempts.

Brown's description of his background gave another clue.

"I had a chance to be around (former offensive coordinator) Andy Ludwig a couple years ago when I was at Wisconsin," Brown said of the 2014 season. "It was a really good job as far as how you married the run and the pass."

Some would be surprised to realize the Badgers actually did pass but when they did they executed play-action well and also the screen game.

It's not that Waldron failed to run the ball enough. The Bears have been in the middle of the pack in rushing attempts, but they were flying high on offense when they had 28 runs against the Rams, 39 against Carolina, 29 against Jacksonville and should have beaten Washington when they ran it 33 times but lost on the Hail Mary.

Then they reverted to 23 and 20 carries the last two games, the trend they had very early in the year when the offense was struggling greatly. They had 22 carries in both of their first two games.

Brown spelled it out very clearly for everyone during his press conference Wednesday. He danced around the topic a bit and mentioned wanting to "marry" the run and the pass well, then delivered the key line.

"Everything to me starts up front, starts with the run game, how we attack, knock it forward mentality," he said. "We build off of that."

Brown won't merely dabble at running the ball.

This should be exactly what Bears fans, running back D'Andre Swift and Williams want to hear because it's going to mean more time to throw, more open receivers and better chances to get to the red zone.

Twitter: BearsOnSI

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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.