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The Potential for a Dramatic Reversal in Dennis Allen's Bears Defense

Beating up the Bears' offseason defensive personnel approach fails to take into account changes and what was really accomplished in their coordinator's first year.
Gene Chamberlain|
Dennis Allen's defense excited no one in three of the 19 games they played, but they performed well enough to win 16 times.
Dennis Allen's defense excited no one in three of the 19 games they played, but they performed well enough to win 16 times. | Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images

The lack of edge rushers, or impactful defensive tackles added to this Bears defensive front, triggered virtually all criticism of what GM Ryan Poles did during this offseason.

The occasional complaint about lack of a legitimate starting left tackle surfaces but they're likely to start the player there who started for them opening day of the Ben Johnson regime, Braxton Jones. Now he's had time recover from the injury sustained in 2024.

Jones has competition from former Browns starting tackle Jedrick Wills Jr., who started five straight years for Cleveland until his own injuries in 2024 and 2023. Then they have Theo Benedet, who started almost half of last season. And they could get Ozzy Trapilo back later, but most teams would love the ability to throw so many former starters at a position battle in lieu of their regular starter.

Their unforeseen center situation has been dealt with as well as anyone could, considering they're replacing a Pro Bowl player. They'll use a starter from a Super Bowl team in Garrett Bradbury, and the first center taken in the draft, Logan Jones

It is defense where the complaining starts and stops.

However, ESPN released its first power ranking in two months on Tuesday and actually has the Bears two spots higher after free agency and the draft. They are ninth overall. How is this even possible when they've done nothing to fix their defense, as virtually everyone maintains? This must really frustrate their detractors and Green Bay Packers fans.

Maybe they actually have improved a good product, and no one is giving them credit for it. Or maybe it wasn't that bad of a product, anyway.

Losing Tremaine Edmunds and gaining Devin Bush has to be a help for their run defense. They gave up 136.9 yards rushing per game in games Edmunds started and he never graded in the top half of the league among linebackers for his pass coverage in three Bears seasons. Bush, meanwhile, was graded fourth in the league for coverage last year and eighth in run defense.

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Linebackers matter against the run and pass.

The great asterisk: injuries

Then there is the injury factor overall. This was the single greatest problem the Bears had on defense last year.

Injuries are no excuse in the NFL, it's often argued, because everyone must deal with them. It's true, they are not an execuse--they're an explanation. If it didn't matter, why did Green Bay go winless after Micah Parsons' ACL tear.

According to Mangameslost.com, the Bears were seventh in games lost per player due to injuries last year.

There are many ways to calculate players lost. According to the analytical site Sports Info Solutions, the Bears lost more games due to injuries than any team in the league. What's worse is almost all of their injuries came on the defensive side.

When cornerback Jaylon Johnson returned from groin surgery, he was not the same player after being away so long and rushing back through rehab. He admitted as much. In essence, they never had Johnson last year, because the only game he played before surgery was part of one at Detroit when he came back from the initial groin injury, then suffered another. Slot cornerback Kyler Gordon was probably the key player coordinator Dennis Allen had intended to use as a weapon in his scheme and he played in three regular-season games.

Eight times last year injuries forced them to alter who their two starting linebackers were in the defensive package they use most, the nickel. Just like on an offensive line, alterations of this type are detrimental. This applies even more when the backups also get hurt.

The Bears had so many injuries that in one game Ruben Hyppolite II and D'Marco Jackson started at linebacker. Jackson wasn't with the team when the season began and Hyppolite was so ineffective as a rookie that he didn't see a second of playing time in the final eight games even while they battled injuries each week. He was in all year for only 31 defensive plays.

There's more to defense than the defensive linemen. As stated, linebackers matter.

Poles did double down on two injured edge players in Shemar Turner and Dayo Odeyingbo, but he did it knowing Austin Booker played like a solid starter over the final six weeks of 2025.

Given all their components who missed so many games last year, the Bears could look like a different team on defense. And how they actually looked wasn't so bad most of they year, anyway. No one else in the league took away the football 33 times.

And how bad were they really, when the Rams needed overtime to scored 20 points on them, when the Packers scored 16 against them, when they held Detroit to 19 but still lost, when they held the Browns to a field goal, and when they held the Eagles to 15 in a road win? All of that happened in the final six regular-season games and the playoffs.

Their stats were skewed by several terrible defensive efforts against the Bengals, Lions, and 49ers, when they allowed. In the other 16 games, including the playoffs, they allowed 20.3 points a game.

That's winning defense in today's NFL. That's actually top-10 defense based on last year.

Imagine the Ben Johnson offense and Caleb Williams backed by a top-10 defense.

In that case, it's hard to see how the Bears only climbed two spots in any power ranking.

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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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