In a little more than a month with the Bears, defensive end Montez Sweat has vaulted their defense from embarrassing to elite. General manager Ryan Poles paid a high price in the trade with the Commanders and in a massive contract extension. It’s looking like smart money.
Sweat has 3½ sacks in five games since his arrival, and his presence has rippled through the defense. The Bears allowed the fifth-most points per game before the trade and have given up the ninth-fewest since.
They have more takeaways with him (11) than without him (nine). Same for sacks, jumping from nine in eight games to 11 in the last five as extra attention on Sweat created opportunities for others. The loaded secondary, once undercut by a punchless pass rush, has been second in the NFL in opponent passer rating (70.7) after the trade.
Turns out the Tez Effect, as coach Matt Eberflus calls it, is real.
“It’s an uptick because of a great pass rusher — that’s what he is,” Eberflus said Monday. “He definitely helps others. . . . It’s enabled us to play more coverage and not [blitz] as much on those situational downs and get home with four.”
Is this what he needed all along? If the Bears had gone into the season with this type of pass rusher, might they have avoided digging themselves a 2-7 hole?
Eberflus finally can call a defense that matches his vision, rather than constantly trying to cobble together work-arounds for its deficiencies.
“I feel a lot better about it,” he said.
Poles should, too. He seems to have drafted well in the secondary and spent well at linebacker, but those moves were negated by having so little up front.
The criticism Poles faced on the Sweat trade was for being a buyer at the trade deadline when his team was spiraling and giving up a second-round pick (currently slotted at No. 37 overall) for a player who was a pending free agent.
But he was right on both fronts. It’s hard to find a top-tier pass rusher that late in the draft, and even if the Bears had continued to plunge, Sweat is 27 and a long-term play. Poles immediately signed him to a four-year, $98 million extension.
As far as giving up a valuable draft pick, that was the only way to get Sweat. The Bears were desperate, as they should’ve been. The Commanders were unloading him either way, and whoever traded for him was going to do the same thing the Bears did to keep him from hitting free agency.
Unlike the Chase Claypool trade, the Bears got an instant return on Sweat.
But they’ve helped him, too. Sweat was good with the Commanders. He has been great with the Bears. Part of their thinking in the trade was that they could make more of his talent.
“When you bring a guy in that has that talent, and he plays to [our] standard, there’s going to be more production,” Eberflus said. ‘‘There’s going to be more intensity.
“You play how you practice, and he’s been practicing his butt off. His stamina is increasing, and he’s done a really good job with that.”
He could argue that Sweat’s quick improvement is proof of the H.I.T.S. concept. When Eberflus arrived, safety Eddie Jackson said practices were harder than they’d ever been under Bears predecessors Matt Nagy and John Fox.
Reading between the lines in the last month, the Bears have taken aim at correcting Sweat’s conditioning, and it shows. He played 48 snaps, his most since the trade, in the Bears’ 28-13 victory against the Lions on Sunday and had two half-sacks — pushing him to 10 for the season for the first time in his career — and four quarterback hits.
The trade has sparked the defense and sparked hope. The Bears hadn’t had either in a while.
