The Real Offensive Line Trouble Spot

The Bears are relying a great deal on coaching this season to get through offensive problems that can result from lack of draft picks or free agent talent.

In particular they'll count on the expertise of line coach Chris Morgan and offensive coordinator Luke Getsy to work an offense with a level of talent far lower than ideal for a rebuild.

They won't have a single first-round pick on their line but the real challenge facing the Bears is at right guard where they are looking at a competition at the moment involving a ninth-year guard/tackle who has started one full season (Dakota Dozier), a center with 24 NFL starts who has never played guard until now (Sam Mustipher) and two Day 3 rookie draft picks who moved to guard from college tackle (Zachary Thomas and Ja'Tyre Carter).

At left and right tackle they are counting on two second-year players who didn't start full seasons as rookies. Left tackle Larry Borom started eight games at right tackle and right tackle Teven Jenkins started two games at left tackle.

The tackle situation could be worse than it looks because of inexperience but at least these are players who have been tackles all along. The switch is at right guard where only Dozier has been an NFL guard. He also played tackle at times, too, but was a backup most of his career.

It's a possibility the coaching staff could wind up relying on a late-round rookie starter at guard.

The Rookie Answer

Whether Morgan can mold a line out of this group remains to be seen, but it would be a huge break for the Bears if one of their rookies steps up, takes the right guard spot and runs with it.

He and other coaches have had to adjust with rookie starters before this.

There is one other option not being mentioned now by the team but could be something to explore later pending the development of another player. If fifth-round draft pick Braxton Jones steps up and wins the left tackle spot or at least proves capable of doing it, the Bears could shift Borom to right guard or they could put Borom at right tackle and play Jenkins at right guard.

Either way, that's all dependent upon too many altered situations and momentum is now trending an opposite direction.

It seems like a long shot to expect either Thomas or Carter to seize the right guard spot, and if they don't then there would seem to be a real limit on how good the line can ever become.

After all, Mustipher was an undrafted free agent center with no guard experience and Dozier had a 44.6 Pro Football Focus grade in the only season he ever played as starter at guard, 2020. Dozier was unimpressive enough last year for Minnesota to release him at the end of August before signing him back later and using him as a backup in six games with no starts.

So, without either Thomas or Carter surprising everyone, the only other Bears option would appear to be signing one of the other free agent guards available. If they intended to go that route, it would seem logical they'd have done it by now.

The chances of a guard from Day 3 of the draft stepping in as a Day 1 starter are long but possible.

For example, there were 17 offensive linemen drafted in Rounds 5-7 in 2021 and only Borom and one other lineman started more than three games as rookies.

San Francisco's Jaylon Moore was a fifth-rounder who started three games. New Orleans' sixth-rounder Landon Young got one start. Cincinnati's Trey Hill, a sixth-rounder, made three starts.

The Bears, as a franchise, haven't had great success drafting and plugging in Day 3 linemen as starters. Their most successful instance of this came in 2014 when Phil Emery was GM and he drafted seventh-rounder Charles Leno Jr. But Leno only started one game as a rookie. A Ryan Pace 2020 seventh-rounder, Arlington Hambright, started one game as a rookie due to COVID-19 and then never impressed and was allowed to leave this year to sign with New England.

It's not an entirely bleak situation because of two other factors entering into the equation—GM Ryan Poles and Getsy.

Coaches Have Done This

Poles was still with Kansas City in 2021 and had a major influence on the retooling of their offensive line, including the selection of Trev Smith in Round 6 at No. 226 overall. Smith was the only rookie offensive lineman taken in the final three rounds to start more games than Borom in 2021 and he started every game.

Getsy was involved as both quarterbacks coach and passing game coordinator last year on Green Bay's line when they used rookie Royce Newman to start 16 games. Newman was a Day 3 pick, but a fourth-rouder. So Getsy knows what needs to be done with young linemen.

Morgan had experience making a similar long shot come through as a rookie. In 2017, Falcons sixth-rounder Wes Schweitzer had to come in as a rookie and started in every game at right guard. He never started every game again in his career with Atlanta or Washington, but did it that one season

So there is some Bears coaching staff precedent for success at finding late-round round offensive linemen and making starters of them as rookies.

It's rather sketchy but it has happened.

At this point the Bears have to hope the coaches can elevate one of their rookie guard candidates the way they seeemd to do with other players in the past, or the concern over Justin Fields having insufficient pass protection or poor run blocking for David Montgomery become reality.

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