Bears Blitz: How the Chicago Bears can limit Ravens superstar Lamar Jackson

Bears Blitz: How the Chicago Bears can limit Ravens superstar Lamar Jackson

Every time this defense takes the field, they are hunting for the ball. It is an exciting brand of football that this Bears D is playing right now. Hello everyone and welcome to Bears Blitz brought to you by IGS Energy. I’m Cassie Carlson alongside Luke Canelis and Anthony Herren. Hey, can the Bears make this thing five in a row for the first time since 2018? Can they walk into a one and five Ravens team on the road at Baltimore with Lamar Jackson trending towards playing and keep the fun alive in Chicago? I Why not, right? I mean, let’s see if the Bears can continue this role. I think it’s going to be tough cuz right now it looks like Lamar Jackson will play in this game. By the way, Lamar Jackson, if you’re listening to me, I know you’re making 260 million bucks right now. You need to renegotiate that contract. When you look at what the Ravens were with Lamar Jackson starting for four games and what they’ve been without him, it’s drastic. The guy leads the NFL with a 130 passer rating in the four games he’s played in. In the two games he did not play big a Cooper Rush as starting quarterback in Baltimore once on 22 drives they scored a touchdown. Huge disparity in the overall scoring offense for Baltimore as well. The games they have the two-time MVP versus the games where they don’t. So it shouldn’t be a big shock there. But we were kind of thinking and hopeful that maybe going into this matchup the Bears would be the team looking healthy as beat up as the Ravens have been. Baltimore coming off a buy. They are getting some reinforcements back. We’re going to see the return of Rocoan Smith against the Bears as well. And now the Bears are the ones who are looking a little bit banged up, but we’re looking at the numbers right here with Lamar Jackson when he’s in the lineup in those four games. Just how fantastic the Ravens offense has been. 10 touchdown passes. None for Cooper Rush in the game that he’s had the opportunity to play. Now, you know, younger, less experienced, not a two-time MVP. So, I mean, you know, we don’t expect him to be as good as Lamar Jackson, but Dererick Henry has been able to be productive and they still really haven’t been able to put up the same amount of points. Yeah, the good news for the Bears is they went into this week preparing like Lamar Jackson was going to play. So, that’s what they have been working on every day so far this week. You mentioned the injuries. That is a huge concern right now in the secondary, especially with Tyreek Stevenson out with the shoulder injury and then the late ad of Kyler Gordon with a groin and calf injury and now he has been ruled out for the game. First the question was if Tyreek Stevenson is out who’s going to play outside corner and everyone thought Kyler Gordon would move to the outside. Now the question is who’s playing outside corner and who’s going to play nickel for this Bears team. Well I think they’re in a tough position now because I thought I wanted to keep before we learned that Kyler Gordon wasn’t going to play in this football game. I thought you keep Gordon at Nickelback because he’s mastered the position so well and you move Nick Mloud or Josh Blackwell to outside corner. 90 to play both Nick Mloud and Josh Blackwell in this defense. It’s asking a lot and the secondary has been the deepest position on the team coming into the season. So, you know, you felt like as we were looking back in training camp, if there were any position room that could sustain a few guys being banged up, you’re thinking the DBs, but yeah, this is a lot and especially because they haven’t had Jaylen Johnson the entire season. And so your top two cover corners, maybe the best nickel in football, that’s Terrell Smith, too. Exactly. That’s asking so much of this Bears’s back end. And the pass rush, while timely, situationally, it’s not like the pass rush has been overwhelming opponents either. So, this will be a unique challenge for Dennis Allen, especially because everyone’s preparing as though Lamar Jackson will be back in the lineup. So you combine those two aspects of Baltimore with him and Derrick Henry. How do you go about defending that? Do you put more bodies toward the line of scrimmage to try and styy what could be a dominant rushing attack? Well, let’s stick with Lamar and Derrick Henry because Dennis Allen was asked, how do you defend a true dual threat quarterback like Lamar because he has that arm talent, but if you rush too many guys, he’ll take off with his feet and escape. And I my question going into this is how healthy is he going to be? Are we going to see the true Lamar because it was a soft tissue hamstring injury that kept him out for those three games? But Lou, when you look at the injuries to the defense and how they’re strategizing how to play this game, are you more worried about Lamar or are you more worried about Derrick Henry, who as Dennis Allen said, you want to take his pistons away in his legs and make sure you tackle low, not high. You know, it’s a great question. Lamar and and you brought up Lamar Jackson and you know, is he really a threat to run the football because of the hamstring injury? I don’t think he is. I think he’s out there to throw the football. In Derrick Henry’s case, he’s been a bit of a disappointment. Number one, he’s fumbled the football away in the last three games for the Ravens. Number two, he had a great game to open the season in that wild one against the Bills if they lost 4140. And then he had his second best game of the season in the most recent game before the by-week against the Rams. But in the middle, all right, he had, let me look at my not in between 33 yards against the Texans, 42 yards against the Chiefs, 50 yards against the Lions, and 23 against the Browns. All with pretty good run defenses. But in my opinion, if you’re the Bears, if you can jump ahead in this game and now force them to run the football, you might be in the best position you can be. And for the Ravens on the offensive line, they’ve had some guys who have missed some time, some guys who are playing through injuries. If you get Ronnie Stanley back, then that’ll be a more formidable Baltimore group up front that the Bears defensive front will have to contend with. And then perhaps Noah Su comes back into the lineup for the Bears this weekend. And so if you get that, you get Tummaine Edmonds, TJ Edwards, and perhaps some three linebacker sets with Noah Su out there as well. We’ve seen that operate really on a short period of time because TJ Edwards was banged up early, then Noah Sul has been banged up here recently. But perhaps if you are mo mostly concerned with the Baltimore run game offensively, then this Bears defense. If you have all three of what you presume to be your best linebackers available to play off ball, now you’re in a good spot. And when Dererick Henry came out of high school, guys, I I called the game he plays in the All-American Bowl. And I said way back then, he was just a high schooler. He was the same size then that he is now. I said, “Oh, this guy’s too big. Nick Saven’s going to move him to tight end or something like that. I still contend that he’s too big. He’s too big to be tackled. So, I mean, yes, the production have been a little bit up and down this season, but he’s been one of the all-time greats, and the Bears run defense has at least shown some signs of improvement recent. Kevin By will be playing against Derrick Henry, his former teammate in Tennessee for the first time as a pro this week. And he said he’s looking forward to it. But he also joked that Derrick Henry never actually practiced in training camp because he kind of had his own set of rules knowing that he was going to get so many carries throughout a season. I want to talk about this Bears defense and the takeaways tear that they have been on because three or more takeaways for a fourth straight game that came against the Saints. They lead the league in takeaways with 16 already have 11 interceptions and Kevin Bard saying the Bears motto is get the ball and Dennis Allen reiterating it. It’s all about putting his players in a position to succeed. We’re having a lot of fun. Uh you know our motto in our room especially in the defensive back room is getting the ball. Uh Al preaches it every single day. Practice games. Uh we have a certain quarter that we got to hit every single day and it’s usually four. Four in practice, four on game day and we’ve been hitting them. Every time we take the field, we’re hunting the football and we’re we’re trying to, you know, take the ball away and get the ball back to the offense because really at the end of the day, that’s the only reason why we go out there is to get the ball back for the offense. So that’s kind of our focus. And a cool thing about Kevin Byer now in year 10, he had his career-high interceptions at eight in year two. He said he’s already re-evaluated his numbers now at this point in the season, wanting to beat that. pretty incredible that in year 10 he’s already producing at the rate he is. I love watching I I love watching Kevin Bard out there because I always considered and we had the opportunity to have Kevin Byard on our show last week uh last last year every week and I always thought that Bard was the one guy that really brought some professionalism to that locker room. Really kept that secondary intact even through all the difficulties that that team went through last season. And now to see this team come up with turnovers, actually takeaways in bunches, and Byer leading the way. And Byer leading the way, I couldn’t be happier for the guy. Yeah. And Kevin Bard, someone that Ben Johnson talked about on Friday, saying that he has that poise and people listen when he does talk. And I got to talk to you about the linebackers, switching Tummaine Edmonds to the weak side and he’s producing at a very high rate and we’re seeing his best season now in Chicago. Why did that switch make sense for Dennis Allen and his defense? One of the things that Tummaine Edmonds has always been exceptional at is playing in space. And I’ve been talking to you guys throughout the season about that athleticism and how it shows up. But immediately reading and reacting to the run, bringing force toward the line of scrimmage, he’s been more inconsistent in that regard. So now getting him accustomed to playing the will and especially now that TJ Edwards has been back healthy in the lineup, you get a big-time Mike linebacker. You can get Tummaine Edmonds more outside. that will linebacker still has to operate within the box, but there’s more opportunities for him to be in space and just use that sideline to sideline athleticism. It’s been a great change for this Bears D. Big A, he is racking up monster tackle numbers. First two seasons with the Bears, he had a buck 10 in each of those f first two seasons. He’s already halfway there through six games. Did you expect the big tackle numbers at the at the will? From what I saw in the preseason, I thought there was a chance of it, but you never know until you get into game action. and it’s been really gratifying to see. I want to see him be the best linebacker on the field this weekend. Really throughout this process in the spring and and in camp, we’ve been pretty consistent with let’s drill the footwork. Let’s let’s uh have that footwork guide us through our progressions. And uh you know, there’s times where we’re really good at it and there’s other times where where we maybe are either too fast or we’re too slow. you go back and you know you don’t throw the pick and and you complete two or three of those um on the runs and the the you know efficiency wise is you know up there with 70%. Yeah, that 70% completion percentage is the magic number for Caleb Williams. Ben Johnson made that goal public throughout training camp and he’s right now hovering around 61% and he has vocalized his frustration with not being able to find the completions especially on the run. That’s not what he’s used to being himself as a quarterback. That’s typically when he is so special. But Ben Johnson keeps reiterating the message that they need to find completions, especially with so many miles to feed. But Lou, are you willing to be patient with Caleb Williams finding his rhythm in the passing game if the run game can carry this offense for as many weeks as it has now, too? I am 100% because my head coach told me to wait until December. And in December, this offense would be playing its best football. Cassie, you said it’s at 61%. It’s been dropping since that Dallas game. That’s bothersome. I think he has shied away from the easy throws. Big gay finding his tight end. We’re going to talk about the tight end coming up in a second. They have used their tight end. They have thrown to their tight end the fewest amount of times in the NFL. They have not thrown enough in my opinion to their running backs coming out of the back field. Find those easy three, four yard passes. Catch and throw and catch. let the playmaker do all the work. And that’s where I think the mentality of Caleb Williams, I did feel like early in the season through the first month of the year, it seemed to me like he was in more point guard mode, really trying to be the the distributor of the football and just get it into the hands of the playmakers. And that does take some rewiring because at every other stop in his football journey, he’s had to be the playmaker, the best player on the field, the one who’s either running or throwing with such precision and such explosion that it just sort of makes the playmakers around him’s lives that much easier. And through the football journey with the Bears so far, we’ve seen a lot of games rookie season and earlier this year where the run game was inconsistent, the defense was giving up points, and Caleb had to shoulder so much of the load. Now, since the byee, that’s not the case. You got a defense that’s vaulted to the top of the National Football League in takeaways and a run game that DeAndre Swift has had back-to-back games of 100 plus rushing yards. So, CO just got to get the rock out of his hands and allow the playmakers to cook. And I think coming off of the game we saw against the Saints, I do feel like it was the term I use for it here on on 670 the score is it was maybe the greediest that Caleb’s been to your point Lou looking for the big play, the splash play. And I I do think he needs to revert back to what we saw earlier in the year. And Cassie, I don’t think he’s looked to run with the football as much as he did a couple of games ago. And to me, he’s become more predictable for the defense. They’re starting to see where he’s instead of thinking about running and taking tucking and run, he’s he’s still looking downfield, which is what we asked him to do decisive, right? But now that linebacker is not on his heels anymore because he’s not the threat of him running isn’t there. Well, and that’s something Ben Johnson said he doesn’t want to take away from his game. We know Ben Johnson, right? Yeah, neuter. I hate that word so much. Why’d you have to bring it up? But Caleb Williams, we know he can be special with his legs. We didn’t see it in the States game. I thought we saw it a little bit against the Commanders. We saw him pick up a couple third and fourth downs with his legs when we thought he was going to throw it to receivers. And now it’s like the mouse defeat has been a topic of conversation going into the season. We’re seeing it again. And Caleb Williams admitted when he’s going through his progressions, he’s not aware of who his first, second read is or even third, fourth, fifth. He said if they win games, no one’s going to complain about the targets they get. But Coloulston Lovelin being down on so many targets, especially when you’re comparing to Tyler Warren with the Colts right now, it’s a huge topic of conversation. Not only when we’re talking to Ben Johnson, who loves Coloulston Lovelin’s approach, says he’s super professional for being a rookie, but when you’re looking at the grand scheme of things, you’re like, why isn’t this guy who was drafted in the top 10 to be a wide receiver type tight end not getting the targets that we thought he was going to get in his rookie season? Yeah, they’re not feeding the tight end at all. Whether it’s Coulson Lovelin or Cole Kmet when Alfie and KT won’t be out there on Sunday against the Ravens and you touched on it. You look at Lovelin’s numbers compared to compared to Tyler Warren in Indianapolis. Warren has tripled tripled the production that Lovelin has so far. And by comparing the two, I I I look at Coloulston Love in a similar way to how I look at Caleb Williams. guys who have all the physical potential for their position, but by comparison to their main contemporary. Tyler Warren had to carry so much of the Penn State offense with what he did in college. And we saw him grow year over year playing so much football throughout all his eligibility where he got better as a blocker, as a pass receiver because he was a high school quarterback. And so we’re seeing a more fully developed version of Tyler Warren. Whereas Coloulston Lovelin, three seasons in college, banged up part of that time, a Michigan passing attack that frankly didn’t throw it that much anyway. He hasn’t had as much time on task in a similar fashion to how I describe Caleb Williams versus Jaden Daniels. But both guys have immense ceilings. And I do think we’re going to see more and more. I’m already seeing Lovelin really improve as a run blocker at the point of attack. And he’s he’s certainly a guy who we know the physical potential that’s there as a pass. Well, I’d imagine with Cole KT not playing in this game, he is going to get targeted more naturally. And you talk about the run blocking, the run game in itself has really come to life. And it was the one-two punch that was really satisfying with not only DeAndre Swift rushing for another 100 yards, but Kyle Manungai getting so involved. And I think everyone thought when Ben Johnson was hired, they were going to have some sort of onetwo punch, but it took him a while to figure it out. Do you feel like that was textbook of the kind of run game and combo of two different types of backs that Ben Johnson wants to see in this offense? I think it was two reasons why. Number one, you needed the offensive line to gel so they could create the openings for these running backs. Number one. And number two, these two guys in the back field needed to build some chemistry as well. And I feel like the coaching staff needed to gain some confidence with the rookie and Kyle Manungy. You know, I saw an interesting stat last week and it wasn’t long ago we were complaining about Manungai dancing behind the line of scrimmage, something that he used to get away with in college football. Last week in that game against the Saints big a he was second fastest when it came to with the football getting to the line of scrimmage. That’s when he was at his best in college evaluating watching his entire Ruters career calling a lot of his games back there. He’s a slasher when he gets north and south quickly. That’s when Kunga is at his best. We’re seeing, I think, the best version of what we’ve seen from DeAndre Swift in his time with the Bears as well because they set him up to get him out in space and he’s electrifying when he’s there, but we’re seeing him now as a guy who gets more vertical with a lot more urgency running down him. So, it’s not just luck. Certainly not. I certainly hope it’s not cuz they got to sustain. I feel like he has that plaster somewhere on his phone or near his locker. [Music]

Bears are riding high on a 4-game winning streak, and the Blitz crew gets you ready for Sunday’s tilt in Baltimore. Cassie, Lou & Anthony discuss how the Bears can limit Lamar Jackson and how Caleb Williams can get back to his identity as a QB.

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