Bear Digest

How the Bears have addressed last week's biggest offensive issue

Not every problem gets solved the same way and Bears coaches, as well as QB Calleb Williams agreed on how to handle last week's anomaly.
Gene Chamberlain|
Olamide Zaccheaus celebrates a TD catch with Rome Odunze earlier this season. Zaccheaus has some making up to do after last week's dropped passes.
Olamide Zaccheaus celebrates a TD catch with Rome Odunze earlier this season. Zaccheaus has some making up to do after last week's dropped passes. | Matt Marton-Imagn Images

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Chicago Bears

The answer to the biggest Bears problem last week seems to be to ignore it.

At least, if not ignore it, they're downplaying it and any concern is being addressed individually by players with their work on individual skills at practice.

The problem, of course, is dropping passes.

“My strategy is like anything, you talk about it, and then you move on, you learn from it, you move on," coach Ben Johnson said. "With my experience—and I've coached quarterbacks, I've coached receivers, I've coached tight ends on the offensive side—and you can make things worse by going overboard on some of this stuff.

"And that's not the intent. All those guys, they want to catch the football when it comes their way. We acknowledge the fact that there's a few of those that we could haul in. We need to do that. Turn the page, let's keep it moving. So we're going to be just fine.”

The potential disaster was Sunday when those drops began. It was easily a situation where quarterback Caleb Williams could have gone ballistic on drops by Olamide Zaccheaus, the two running backs, even Rome Odunze. They had six drops by most counts. 

Instead, Williams said after the game that he couldn't call anyone out on mistakes like that during the game itself, and his reaction was to encourage receivers and be positive they'd make catches going forward. Eventually, they did.

Coaches loved Williams' level-headed approach.

"I’m upstairs, so I’m not with him down there," offensive coordinator Decland Doyle said. "However, just communicating through the headset to all of our coaches, it seemed that everybody is ... there was no flinch.

"We kept believing. We really felt like, 'hey, we can get this going here.' I think that he was a great example of that down there on the field just being able to communicate with our guys and keep them in it."

They kept their heads in it and eventually their hands worked better in the fourth quarter during their rally.

"Obviously we didn't maximize some of the opportunities that came our way in the first and second, third quarter, but we were able to make some plays down the stretch and get us some field position and get a field goal and have Caleb score at the end," wide receiver Rome Odunze said.

After the game, Johnson had called it an anomaly. That’s basically how they’ve treated it.

Now, the goal going forward is to have their heads and hands in it at the beginning.

They'll be indoors this week, so no weather excuses on Sunday against Minnesota.

A repeat performance can’t be treated as an anomaly.

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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.