The Chicago Bears spent most of the 2024 off-season focused on improving their offense. This isn’t a huge surprise since it once again finished among the league’s worst last season. GM Ryan Poles and head coach Matt Eberflus knew that if they were going to start winning more games, it had to be through scoring more points. However, defense is still a prominent identity of this franchise. The unit played some of its best football in years down the stretch of last season. Trying to improve it even a little should’ve been a goal.
Most people don’t believe that happened. At best, the defense is as good as it was last year. Not everybody agrees with this. Former Bears executive Greg Gabriel believes a seemingly minor adjustment to their lineup has made the Bears significantly harder to play against this season. It involves replacing former safety Eddie Jackson with veteran Kevin Byard. While on the surface it seems like nothing more than a swap of similar players, that is not the case at all because Byard is considerably different. This is due to his ability to play a more physical style.
With Byard and Brisker paired together, the Bears may have one of the fastest set of safeties in the League. Both were timed 4.46 or better when they came out of college. Without question, it is the most physical set of safeties in years.
What will help the safeties this year is that the Bears coaches have changed how the safeties line up. Instead of a free and strong safety, the Bears safeties will line up left and right. In essence, both will play free or strong, depending on the offensive formation. When I was with the Giants in the Parcells years, this is how we played our safeties. By being left and right instead of strong and free, it can cause confusion for the offense as to what the coverage is and that helps the defense as a whole.
One thing you can never understate is the value of players who can do multiple things. It’s called versatility. A reason some opponents had success against the Bears defense last year was that they knew their safety duo was locked into specific roles. Brisker was the strong safety, playing most of his snaps around the line of scrimmage. Jackson was the free safety responsible for handling coverage duties. It is easy to game plan against such things. That changes once you realize both safeties can handle either responsibility.
Gabriel mentioned the Parcells Giants teams as a shining example. Their 1986 championship team had a pair of safeties that each had at least three interceptions and one sack. Offenses were never able to determine where they’d be because they were also moving around. Bill Belichick, the Giants defensive coordinator at the time, carried that same philosophy with him to New England with players like Rodney Harrison, Brandon Meriweather, Patrick Chung, and Devin McCourty. It isn’t a bad thing that the Chicago Bears are embracing a similar philosophy.
