NEWSLETTER
In Week 7, the Chicago Bears and Defensive Coordinator Vic Fangio found themselves with a tough challenge: Beat the New England Patriots and one of the greatest quarterbacks ever, Tom Brady. Needless to say, it didn’t work out.
One-yard short or not, the Bears now have plenty of questions to answer going forward. But before we turn our attention entirely to the weeks ahead, I still have some questions about the defensive decisions in Week 7. Namely, why was one of the Bears’ best pass-rushers, Khalil Mack, dropped back into coverage so often?
On an afternoon when getting to Tom Brady should have been a top priority, Mack dropped back more than we’d normally expect (or like) to see. It’s quite possible there was some strategy at play here – i.e. it wasn’t just him, Leonard Floyd dropped back more than normal, too – but it still just doesn’t make much sense, even when accounting for his ankle injury.
On Sunday, Khalil Mack played more coverage snaps (18) than pass-rushing snaps (16), according to Pro Football Focus, constituting a new career-high for the Bears linebacker. Meanwhile, the pass-rushing duties were left to the rest of the squad and the results were disappointing: three QB hits on 38 passing snaps, none of which came from Mack.
And it’s not as though Mack wasn’t on the field or something. In fact, he played more yesterday (54 snaps of 64 snaps, or 84%) than he has on average this season (80.58%). Considering he missed a majority of last week’s practice reps while resting up an ankle injury, it’s fair to question that level participation (both in isolation *and* with respect to how it may have hurt the team) – and we’ll get to that – but let’s start by giving the Bears the benefit of the doubt.
So we know that Mack (and Floyd) were dropped back into coverage much more often than usual on Sunday, and it’s possible this was simply the plan-of-attack against Brady. Perhaps, the Bears wanted to scheme for coverage over the middle to prevent his frequently successful short passes (Brady’s 7.5 average intended air yards is among the 10 lowest in the NFL this season). But if that was the plan, it didn’t really work: Brady’s 69.4% completion rate on Sunday was higher than 5 of his 6 previous games – he also tied his season-high with 3 touchdowns and passed his way to 277 total yards (tied for his 3rd highest mark of the season) and a 108.2 passer rating.
But maybe that’s not much of a surprise. After all, Mack has been dealing with an ankle injury, and while you might be able to argue that dropping back in coverage is less of a physical stressor for him, coverage is not his strength, even when he’s at full health, which, again, he was not. Which brings me to my next point.
Maybe the Bears would concede that Mack isn’t their best coverage option, but wanted to keep him involved in the action nonetheless (maybe as a decoy or maybe because they did actually think he was their best option). And maybe the only “safe” way to keep him involved was to drop him back into coverage more often than not. Now, that’s not a very good or convincing explanation, but I suppose it is at least a possibility. Unfortunately, when bad and unconvincing explanations are presented, they often come with negative downstream impacts, and this, of course, is no exception.
With Mack (and Floyd) spending more time in coverage than usual, someone had to take a backseat on Sunday, and unfortunately, that someone was linebacker Roquan Smith … (a.k.a. one of the Bears *best* and most athletic linebacker coverage options).
Smith played on just 54.7 percent of the team’s total defensive snaps on Sunday, a sharp decline after averaging more than 81 percent of the snaps after his Week 1 debut. It was a curious decision, to be sure – given that Smith’s speed and coverage skills could have been best deployed for a defense that had no answers for Patriots running back James White (10 targets, 8 catches, 57 yards, 2 touchdowns) out of the backfield – but it was the Bears decision nonetheless.
Now, again, I might be able to explain this away by guessing that the Bears maybe didn’t want to see a young player like Smith exploited by Brady – I suppose that sort of exploitation can leave lasting, unwanted effects, both obvious (future decision making) and less so (confidence) – but that falls just short of justifiable to me (and it certainly wouldn’t have been my choice, even if I did buy it).
Nope. From where I stand, it seems like the Bears desperately wanted to keep Khalil Mack on the field and decided that, the only way to do it safely was to drop him back in coverage more often than usual. And perhaps they justified that decision by pointing to Brady’s strengths over the middle and Mack’s importance to this defense/wide skill set in general. But when push came to shove, the Bears not only left what might’ve been their *actual* best coverage option, Smith, on the bench, more than you’d like to see, they also forced a player nursing an ankle injury, Mack, into a very important job that he *maybe* wasn’t prepared to perform up to his usual standards thanks to an injury.
Which brings us to the title of this post: If Khalil Mack was too injured to rush the passer – as the evidence seems to suggest – why was he in there at all? I’d imagine just giving him the entire day off might have helped him recover faster this season, as well as avoid any unnecessary long-term risk. But it’s all in the past.
And, of course, this is all obviously quite speculative, but I think it’s still worth discussing. The Bears came close to their fourth win on Sunday, but came up just short. And unfortunately, their usually reliable defensive decision making might have played a disproportionately large role in that performance. So let’s just hope Mack rests up that ankle and is 100% this weekend. That way, the Bears don’t have to force any square pegs into round holes.
Michael Cerami Contributed to this post.
