Andy Dalton, First Team Take Aim at End Zone

Andy Dalton heard all of those cheers for Justin Fields on Saturday and would rather have had a first down.

The focus of a veteran quarterback goes to the task at hand of building the offense and not the reaction of people who have nothing to do with the team besides watch it.

"You can't focus on that," Dalton said. "If you focus on that, then that's gonna beat you down and so I know who I am, I know who I was created to be, I know where my identity lies and so do I want the fans behind me and this team and all that kind of stuff? Yes. Do I want them behind Justin? Absolutely, I do.

"But that's not my focus. I can't focus on all that right now. Like I've said before, Justin is going to have his time and Justin is going to have a great career but right now it's my time and so my focus is on being the best player I can be for this team and do everything I can to help this team win."

Dalton went through a full range of emotions and situations during his first 10 years in the NFL to prepare him for this.

"I mean, the thing is there is so much excitement with Justin and I mean deservedly so," Dalton said. "I mean, he's a first-round pick and just with everything that's gone on here, there's a lot of excitement with it.

"But I didn’t feel like there wasn't excitement for me either, you know? So it's like, yeah, I think for us if we just go out and operate how we know we can do, I think the fans will be excited when we score lots of touchdowns this year."

The problem was the offense didn't score anything with the first string on the field. They didn't get a first down on their two possessions and then Dalton left the field.

Against Buffalo Saturday, Dalton already figured to get much of the playing time. Things will be different this year in preseason, says coach Matt Nagy. The starters may get more time than normal in the final preseason game because there are two weeks before the regular season begins.

So it might be a case of tuning up the first-team offense this week and possibly a few more series against Tennessee. The details of this plan haven't been released as yet.

"We would have liked to have picked up a first down, and I thought we had one there," Dalton said. "It would have given us a little momentum. But then we had the holding call and we didn’t win both times on third down.

"Two opportunities to move the chains we didn't take advantage of. This week obviously we'll have a chance to get in more of a rhythm."

The groin injury to Fields could keep Dalton playing past the point the Bears planned to pull him but there's no way to tell this with a day-to-day injury.

Dalton and coach Matt Nagy see the first-team offense in a good state, even if the game didn't show this and definitely Tuesday's practice didn't. The offense at every level was beaten down by the Bears defense in that day's practice.

"Really close, I really feel great about it," Nagy said about the offense. "I think that the pieces that we have here and how we want to do things, again, some of this like you saw yesterday, with some of the frustration we had with the way some of practice was going offensively, we've got some wide receivers that are limited right now so some of this is with the backups and the other guys.

"Schematically, where we're at personnel wise, across the board, you know, that's our job every year even to my first year in '18, you know you're learning things, you're trying to teach the players. Now you've got guys like Allen Robinson that know the ins and outs of every play and that helps out as a play-caller. As a coach, they can become those coaches on the field. We have more of those guys now than what we've had in previous years because we're 2, 3, 4 years into it."

They also have more speed in the passing game with Darnell Mooney, Marquise Goodwin and Damiere Byrd in the receiver group.

"I mean, this team has a lot of speed and, you know, to have that ability to have that as part of our group is going to allow us to do some really good things and gives us the ability to use their speed to our advantage," Dalton said.

The speed on the field is a help, but Nagy said the speed with which they all learn what the offense is doing might be even more critical.

"Well the speed speaks for itself," Nagy said. "I mean the guys we brought in in the wide receiver room you have that. But just all in general I think the guys just having more experience it helps them.

"You know Mooney, even Mooney, a guy like Mooney that came in last year and did what we asked but now he's growing, we're seeing things that he can do better and implementing into the offense that we didn't know last year. Cole Kmet, same thing, we're trying to get him more involved. So that just, it helps everything. David Montgomery, whether it is a certain route out of the backfield that he's getting better at that he couldn't do maybe as well his first ear so that's kind of that."

Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven