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The Chicago Bears Assistant Most in Need of a 'Breakout' Season

The Athletic has identified one "breakout" coaching candidate for the Bears but their staff includes another one who really needs to have that kind of success.
Gene Chamberlain|
Bears defensive line coach Jeremy Garrett had one of the team's least successful position groups last year.
Bears defensive line coach Jeremy Garrett had one of the team's least successful position groups last year. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

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Chicago Bears

A common theme of listicle by NFL writers everywhere is to bring up potential "breakout" players.
What constitutes a breakout is often debated and should be.

The Athletic's Jourdan Rodrigue has applied this to the world of coaching and not head coaches. The thought behind the story is identifying young coaches who will step out of the limelight in a big way but the way the story turns out defeats its purpose.

A majority of the coaches named in this are coordinators, and coordinators have already had "breakout" years or they would still be underlings and not one step from being a head coach.

The Bears' name on this list is not a coordinator, though. It is tight ends coach Jim Dray. It's a rather unusual choice because his group actually already "broke out" last year.

Bears tight ends coach Jim Dray.
Bears tight ends coach Jim Dray. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

When you can help get a rookie tight end to miss all the offseason and still lead the team in receptions and yardage while tying for the touchdown lead, and then set an NFL postseason record for tight end receiving yards, you've made quite a coaching statement.

This coach already had success

The Pro Football Focus tight end rankings have come out and the Bears not only have Colston Loveland in the top 10 but also Cole Kmet in the top 32 ranked tight ends. Getting two tight ends in that list says your tight ends coach already did something really right last year.

Dray will have the chance to do even better this year, though, if Ben Johnson finds a way to successfully use three tight ends in the attack like the Rams did last year, and manages to get third-round rookie Sam Roush involved.

So Dray is not the guy on this coaching staff the Bears most need to become a breakout coach because he's arlready succeeding at his level. The coach who they really need to find success is defensive line coach Jeremy Garrett.

The Bears assisant who needs to break out

Their defensive line couldn't stop the run, ranked near the bottom of the league in pass rush efficiency, and was tied for 22nd in sacks. Only 27 1/2 of their 35 sacks came from defensive linemen.

The Bears haven't had a formidable pass rush from the defensive line since 2021, when Robert Quinn's team record 18 1/2 sacks was part of a 49-sack total. In the case of this defensive line, they need to stop the run first because it was their inability to do this overall that led to their lack of pass rush pressure.

It's not an easy task dumped on Garrett's lap. He does have Montez Sweat, and Austin Booker showed great promise from the end of November on until the end of last season. However, the lack of defensive tackle prod0uction and then to bring in an entirely new group of backup players at that position looks on paper like an ineffective response from GM Ryan Poles to obvious weaknesses.

The Bears really need for Garrett to break out as a coach if this group is going to accomplish anything. Here, the coaching staff is counting on one of its least experienced assistants. Garrett had two seasons as an assistant defensive line coach with Cleveland in 2020-21 and in 2024 for the Jacksonville Jaguars. In his only other year before 2025 as an NFL defensive line coach, his Jaguars were 28th in sacks, 29th in pressures and 25th against the run.

In Cleveland, Garrett was merely the assistant line coach and they benefited from having one of the best two interior defensive lineman in the league at the time, Myles Garrett. Still, they weren't top 10 in stopping the run. They were 12th and 24th.

The Bears badly need Garrett to squeeze more out of Grady Jarrett, Gervon Dexter and Dayo Odeyingbo than they got last year.

During OTAs, defensive coordinator Dennis Allen said the hope is coaches and players benefit more this year from being able to work at fundamentals in the offseason more than last year, when they were trying to install the scheme. It could mean better production and a chance for Garrett to get across the desired skills to his players.

"We do have a high volume of things that we carry in the defense, and we focused so much on that that we lost sight of some of the fundamentals and techniques that it takes to function to do those things," Allen said. "I don't think we were as fundamentally-sound defensively as we need to be.

"So how do we have to coach it better? Well, let's minimize how much we're focused on the scheme and let's focus on not what we're going to do, but how we're going to do it."

He called this a solid way to improve and it was the focus of the offseason. Now, especially for Garrett, it needs to be the starting point for training camp.

"You look across the board at all three levels of the defense, I just feel like you go in and you watch it and in some ways you're a little disappointed because it doesn't look exactly like you want it to look," Allen said. "But you're also really encouraged because if we can get better at those fundamentals and techniques on all three levels of our defense, how much can we really improve?"

They're about to find out, and for some of the coaches it could mean the difference between remaining with the team and moving on elsewhere after this season.

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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.

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