Quick Assembly Required for Bears O-Line

As far as debuts go, it was a meager one.

The Bears put together their starting offensive line for Saturday's 27-24 win over Tennessee and really saw it working in game conditions for the first time. They'd barely seen it working in practice due to numerous injuries.

Now they have to get it ready to face Aaron Donald and last year's No. 1 defense in the NFL in a little over a week's time.

Good luck with that.

"It was definitely good to get everybody out there and get all the guys communicating on the same page," center Sam Mustipher said.

Putting Mustipher together with left guard Cody Whitehair, right guard James Daniels, right tackle Germain Ifedi and left tackle Jason Peters failed to achieve instant success. In fact, even with Justin Fields at quarterback they were unable to move the ball much of the first half.

The Bears ran it for only 19 yards on seven attempts, with Fields' scrambles taken out of the equation. Damien Williams was stuffed on third-and-2 and on fourth-and-1 runs and Tennessee was playing mostly backups at the time. They had two critical penalties, a false start and a hold, and Ifedi got Fields sacked on a play when Peters also didn't get his man thoroughly blocked.

The Bears left the entire line on the field for the whole first half and eventually it clicked when they drove to Jesper Horsted's 20-yard TD catch of Fields' throw before halftime.

"I thought it was good for them," coach Matt Nagy said. "It really was. That's why we wanted to do that, it was to be able to let them get out there.

"Not even so much schematically as it was just them working together, them being in the huddle, them knowing what it's like together, sitting on the bench with (line coach) Juan (Castillo) after a play, looking at the video together. But that's what it's all about."

Nagy seems to think there is time still to have the group playing at a higher level by the start to the season, even though there are only two padded practices before the opener.

"Now we've got time to put it all together, get it to where we're at, and they get to see themselves on tape," he said. "But I thought it was very important. Regardless of results and really what happened, I thought it was important to get the cohesion of them being together."

Mustipher called the communication aspect of it on the field completely critical.

"Seeing things through one set of eyes as a unit, that's critical for offensive line play," Mustipher said. "If we can get that down and just work on getting reps together, working on double-teams, combinations, understanding protections, mike (middle linebacker) points, different alignments of defenses, you know we can do that to make everybody's jobs easier, that's going to be the huge part."

One thing they wanted to see was the conditioning aspect for 39-year-old Peters, who hadn't been in an NFL camp before signing with the Bears a few weeks ago. He got 21 snaps and they'll check Sunday to see how he's doing after the work. Nagy virtually conceded the starting spot to Peters even though rookie Larry Borom was competing for the chance to start.

"I feel good with Jason," Nagy said. I think Juan does, I think (offensive coordinator) Bill (Lazor) does. He's come in here.

"What I'm really impressed with with is how well he's picked up the lingo, the terminology. He's done great there. And he's so focused."

Nagy said even though Peters is trying to learn the offense on the fly, he's able to help out younger linemen.

"I mean, he's awesome," Nagy said. "That's all we can ask for. Now it's just the physical side. Like, where's he at physically for Week 1.

"He knows it. We're going to step it up, we're going to get him going. He's ready for it. But I think that's a really good acquisition by Ryan (Pace) and his guys to get him in here."

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