NEWSLETTER
The NFL’s evolution into a pass-happy league has led teams to focus on creating loaded secondaries to defend against an ever-growing group of talented pass catchers. And no team perfected that mission like the Seattle Seahawks, whose Legion of Boom – Kam Chancellor, Earl Thomas, and Richard Sherman – is leading the way in the fight against some of the league’s best passing games.
But with Chancellor retiring and Sherman signing with San Francisco after being cut earlier in the offseason, this era of Seattle’s swarming secondary can officially be put to rest. However, there are several teams that can make a case to be next in line to take the torch and run with it. And one of those teams could very well be the Chicago Bears.
Danny Kelly of The Ringer takes a look at which teams have the potential to have the league’s next great secondary, and the Bears are listed among the contenders.
The safety tandem of Eddie Jackson and Adrian Amos teaming with the cornerback trio of Kyle Fuller, Prince Amukamara, and Bryce Callahann helped limit opposing passing games to the seventh fewest yards and fifth fewest touchdowns last season. Those are the kind of numbers that elite secondaries put up, which is reason enough for Kelly to feel some type of way about the future of that particular group. To post those numbers without a menacing pass rush says a lot about what that group did in the defensive backfield with the pressure on them to produce.
And while it’s a tad bit concerning that the Bears finished in the middle of the pack in opposing quarterback rating and came away with the third fewest interceptions last season, Defensive Coordinator Vic Fangio seems convinced that having continuity coming into this season that it didn’t have before could help do wonders to help continue to grow the defense. If the Bears’ secondary can stay healthy, get some help from the front seven, and not be asked to be on the field as often as it was last year (you know, because the offense couldn’t sustain drives) then this group could break out in a big way in 2018.
