Bears’ running game can’t stay stuck, especially after huge investment in offensive line

Despite the Bears’ massively expensive overhaul of their interior offensive line and a renewed focus on north-south running by D’Andre Swift, they have yet to make progress in their ground game.

The team ranks 24th in yards per game (102.3) and 25th in yards per carry (3.8) — very near where it finished last season — and has just three rushing touchdowns. Coming off a career-worst 3.8 yards per rush last season, Swift is at 3.3 through four games and getting no help from backups Roschon Johnson and Kyle Monangai.

Throughout those struggles, coach Ben Johnson has insisted Swift isn’t the problem. He sees it as more of an issue with missed blocking assignments and his own timing and design as a play caller.

It’s a conversation the Bears shouldn’t be having after believing they’d spent their way out of trouble.

Between the trades for left guard Joe Thuney and right guard Jonah Jackson and signing center Drew Dalman in free agency, they shelled out $145.5 million over the next three seasons. Thuney and Jackson are in the top 15 average salaries at guard; Dalman is the fourth-highest paid center.

Johnson has more of a reputation as a quarterback whisperer and expert in passing attacks, but that’s overblown. As Lions offensive coordinator the last three seasons, his team finished 11th in rushing in 2022, fifth in ’23 and sixth last season, and he takes the Bears’ shortfalls “personally” because he spends more time overall on running than passing.

“It’s hard to evaluate any of our running backs [because] when you turn on the tape, there’s some free runners in the hole where the play is designed to go,” Johnson said. “We’ve got to learn from everything that we put on tape so far as an entire unit so that those combinations can be a lot cleaner and so we give our runners a chance.

“We do have some dynamic players, whether it’s our running backs or our receivers, [and] if we can give them a chance to get a little bit of green grass, they take advantage of it. But we just haven’t done it consistently enough.”