NEWSLETTER
The folks at Pro Football Focus continue to shower Adrian Amos with praise.
Gordon McGuinness shares the site’s top-10 safeties heading into the 2018 season, where you’ll find Amos checking in at No. 7 overall. It’s a talented crop of safeties that features six players who are on the Bears’ list of 2018 opponents and includes a pair of divisional foes. So it says a lot about what Amos has done to be hanging with company like Harrison Smith, Landon Collins, Earl Thomas, Lamarcus Joyner, Glover Quin, and others among the league’s best safeties. The Bears certainly have a good one in Amos.
Amos played at an “elite” level by PFF’s standards last season, earning a 92.0 overall grade that ranked second behind Smith (97.0) and ahead of Joyner (90.3) in 2017. The Penn State product has always been solid against the run because of his sure-handed tackling ability, which he showed off in 2017 as he missed just six tackles. However, Amos took a leap onto another level in 2017 by improving against the pass. His 89.5 coverage grade ranked sixth among safeties last season, which isn’t bad for a player who didn’t begin the season in the starting lineup and played just 16 snaps in the year’s first three games.
As it stands, Amos might need to continue his high-end play if the Bears’ defense is going to maintain its spot among the league’s best.
PFF’s Michael Renner ranks the league’s secondaries, and the Bears’ ranking checks in lower than you might expect. Chicago’s defensive backs rank 16th in the 32-team league. That puts them smack dab in the middle, which is certainly disappointing considering that this group is widely viewed as a strength entering 2018.
Renner says Amos is “the budding star of the unit” and cites his PFF grade while doing so. Cornerback Prince Amukamara has been quietly steady and consistently solid when healthy and playing. And on the other side of the formation, Renner highlights how Amukamara’s cornerback partner Kyle Fuller lived up to his first-round billing with a career-best 84.3 grade in 2017. But still … there should be something to be said about having continuity in the back end with solid starters, three of whom were drafted by the team and still could have untapped potential to unearth.
The Bears’ defensive backfield will be tested out of the gates when the regular season opens up as the group faces Super Bowl winning signal callers Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson in the first two weeks. At that point, we’ll start to see whether PFF has the Bears’ secondary ranked too high, too low, or just right. But based on last year’s production, that group should probably get a little more credit than it has received.
