The first thud of Monday’s Bears practice shouted what all the drills and sprints and stretching of last week could not.
Pads were on. Football was back.
“It’s real football now …” rookie running back Kyle Monangai said. “Now the defense can’t say, ‘That’s a tackle’ when they just grab some cloth. We can finally tell them this is a good four- or five-yard pickup on a carry.
“We’re starting to see the realistic looks.”
That wasn’t the case in the Bears’ first four practices, when offensive lineman didn’t have any pads to grab onto when trying to run block. Or when defenders couldn’t do much more than try to bear hug the ball-carrier as they ran by.
Padded practices are the time to build the run game — which, in turn, will help Caleb Williams. A strong rushing offense is essential to the quarterback making a Year 2 jump under Ben Johnson because it will allow the new head coach to do what he does best: call play-action passes.
Johnson said he won’t merely copy his Lions’ offense from the last three years this season, but it’s clear he believes in using the run to set up the pass.
“Football 101,” center Drew Dalman said. “The more stress you can put on the defense being able to run the ball, that opens things in the pass game. When you’re a team that can attack as an offense from multiple directions as far as run and pass, that makes you really effective.
“It all ties together.”
Johnson’s formula in Detroit relied on a dominant, devoted run game. Only two teams ran the ball more often than the Lions all last year, while no one ran more over left tackle and one team ran more over right tackle.
The scheme revived quarterback Jared Goff’s career, earning him Pro Bowl berths two of the last three years after being cast aside by the Rams as salary ballast in a trade for Matthew Stafford. He led the NFL in play-action passes by a mile last season. His 203 play-action throws were 52 more than the next-closest player, Stafford. His 2,060 passing yards on play-action dwarfed the No. 2 player, the Vikings’ Sam Darnold, who had 1,474.
The same thing was true in 2023, when Goff threw a league-leading 151 times on play-action for a league-best 1,415 yards. In 2022, he ranked fourth in play-action passes but still led the league with 1,445 yards.
Put more simply: Goff’s 4,920 play-action passing yards the last three years are more than every Bears quarterback combined for over the past six. They had 4,871.
Williams, who finished 16th with 85 passes and 20th with 626 passing yards on play-action passes last year, is actually better-suited to throw off of play fakes than Goff. At 6-foot-1, he’s been forced to his whole life. His “super power,” Johnson said, is his ability to roll both to his left or right and decide whether to throw or a dead sprint or take off running.
The Bears couldn’t see what that looked like in real time during the offseason program or the first four training camp practices. Monday, with pads on, they could.
The result was encouraging. Williams’ first completion in team drills was a pass to first-round pick Colston Loveland on a play-action pass. Later, in seven-on-seven drills, Loveland soared into the air, arms extended above his head, and snatched a pass for a long gain. Williams found DJ Moore, who also lined up in the backfield during practice, for two completions. Later, in another round of team drills, Williams completed passes to tight end Cole Kmet and slot receiver Olamide Zaccheaus.
“Every day, he’s going to give you one throw or do something that’s going to make you open your eyes and say, ‘Whoa,’” Monangai said. “The skillset that he brings, it’s something that’s going to carry this offense to where we need to be.”
The only way to make the play-action pop — to, in Johnson’s words, make similar things look different and different things look the same — is to improve the run game. The Bears’ 102 rushing yards per game last year was eighth-worst in the NFL, while the Lions’ 146.4 was sixth-best.
The Bears brought back their three top running backs, adding just Monangai, the seventh-round pick who was the second-leading rusher in Rutgers history. Without new rushers, the Bears are counting on a revamped offensive line to help and have spent the offseason putting Williams under center, rather than in shotgun, to better sell run fakes.
Johnson, though, figures to be the difference-maker. He’s been one before.
“He’s incredibly knowledgeable, he’s detailed,” Dalman said. “Those two attributes are excellent to have in a play caller. I’m sure that plays into his success.”