The Bears’ defense might plunge right back into its old problems if it can’t pivot in the pass rush after defensive end Yannick Ngakoue’s season-ending injury.
Ngakoue didn’t fix the pass-rush deficiency the way general manager Ryan Poles had hoped when he shelled out $10.5 million for him on a one-year deal in training camp. That answer came with the trade for defensive end Montez Sweat a couple of months later. But Sweat’s arrival sparked Ngakoue, and the Bears will need help from elsewhere now that he’s out.
As the highest-paid player on the team, Sweat has to lead the way when the Bears host the Cardinals on Sunday. He has been better than advertised and had 2½ sacks against the Browns, but the Bears didn’t get any other sacks unless they blitzed.
Coach Matt Eberflus doesn’t blitz often, and that’s not the best way to deal with multitalented Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray anyway. The Bears need to pressure him with four linemen and manage his mobility.
The Cardinals have allowed 38 sacks, the 10th-most in the league, and Murray has been sacked 14 times in five games coming off a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee.
The Bears’ pass rush was a concern since the day Poles took the job, and it got a lot worse before it started getting better. Poles unloaded Khalil Mack two months into his tenure in 2022 and dealt Robert Quinn, the Bears’ single-season record-holder for sacks, to the Eagles later in the year.
Poles finally started adding when he signed veteran DeMarcus Walker for $21 million over three years and splurged for Ngakoue, and that still wasn’t enough.
It became increasingly worrisome that Poles had undercut progress he had made elsewhere, such as stocking the secondary to the point where it’s one of the most talented in the NFL, by coming up short in the pass rush. The first five quarterbacks the Bears faced this season, including Jordan Love, Baker Mayfield and Sam Howell, posted a passer rating of 99 or higher.
Sweat was a game-changer, but he can’t do it alone. The solution has to come from a combination of Eberflus’ creativity — without some of the errors that cost him against the Browns when he brought pressure — and someone else stepping up as a running mate.
Logically, the Bears should look for answers where they’ve invested resources. That means their best shot is for Walker to step up. He carries one of the top-10 salary-cap hits on the team.
Walker was in on a sack of Browns quarterback Joe Flacco with blitzing linebacker T.J. Edwards, and that pushed his total to two for the season. He earned his Bears contract, which nearly tripled his previous annual pay, by piling up a career-high seven sacks last season for the Titans.
Poles invested serious draft capital in rookie defensive tackles Gervon Dexter (second round) and Zacch Pickens (third) last spring, and he and Eberflus touted the idea of those two creating a pass rush by ‘‘denting the pocket.’’ That’s still theoretical, however.
The Bears also drafted Dominique Robinson in the fifth round in 2022 and have worked hard to develop him, but they aren’t getting tangible results there, either. He had 1½ sacks in his NFL debut but has only a half-sack since. He was a healthy scratch for six games before re-emerging against the Browns for 19 snaps off the bench.
Poles and Eberflus hoped they had found something in free agent Rasheem Green, who had 17 sacks in his first five seasons, but he has only two sacks in 14 games.
The Bears certainly are better with Sweat spearheading the attack on opposing quarterbacks, but they otherwise don’t appear to be in much better position than they were last season, when safety Jaquan Brisker led them with four sacks. If it’s only Sweat, they’re still going to encounter many of the same snags that hurt them before he arrived.
