Surprise! Jordan Howard sounds happy to be out of whatever Dowell Loggains and John Fox were calling an offense the last two seasons.
“Last year, we were pretty much basic. Everybody knew what we were going to do,” Howard said during an appearance on NFL Network’s Good Morning Football program. “They knew what was coming pretty much every play, so it was pretty easy for them to stop us. Now, I feel like we’re going to be a lot more creative and have defenses off balance.”
And with that, we can add the Bears’ star running back to the list of people pleased with the coaching change at Halas Hall.
Howard first expressed some joy shortly after the Bears announced the hiring, saying he expected the Bears’ offense to post some big numbers with Head Coach Matt Nagy calling the shots. Despite running behind a predictable offensive game plan, Howard still rushed for 1,000 yards in each of his first two seasons – something no Bears running back had ever done before. That Howard was still productive despite the obvious limitations of Loggains’ scheme and play calling says something about the type of ceiling Howard might have in the years to come. The same could be said about Tarik Cohen, just ask Darren Sproles.
“We struggled on offense this past year,” Howard said. “So I’m definitely excited about that because we definitely needed some help.”
Help comes in the form of Nagy and Offensive Coordinator Mark Helfrich. While the focus has been on how Nagy will try to get the most from quarterback Mitch Trubisky, the tag team of Nagy and Helfrich’s plan for the running game is important, too. Intertwining Nagy’s West Coast scheme with Helfrich’s spread concepts should mean the Bears’ offense will be anything but “basic” in 2018.