The Bears loved what they saw when Montez Sweat pressured passers, but when offensive lines overplayed him it often became problematic.
They know they don’t want to blitz 22.2% of the time again, a figure that Sportsradar said was 21st most—highest finish for blitz rate by any of Matt Eberflus’ six NFL defenses.
It’s why new defensive coordinator Eric Washington said that would be ending.
“We’d like to be—we’re going to be—a team that generates pressure with our front four,” Washington said. “We’re going to build the best pass rush in football. That happens to be an area, fortunately an area, that I’ve had tremendous success with and we have the personnel to get that done.”
He’s going to probably need more help to get this done. It won’t all come in the draft. Some could, but there are options in free agency that don’t include spending $35 million for Chris Jones.
With free agency approaching, some web analysts see Bears options here or at other positions.
A few seem to be fits, but the biggest complaint about Spielberger’s Bears targets is he seems to be more worried about their cap space than he should. He was being downright chintzy considering how critical this need is, weighed against their available cap space.
The four players he classified as fits for the Bears were Houston defensive end Jonathan Greenard, Buffalo end A.J. Epenesa, Indianapolis edge Tyquan Lewis and San Francisco edge rusher Clelin Ferrell.
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