As the Eagles vent about their offense being too “predictable” and calling for “a little bit more variety,” to use veteran right tackle Lane Johnson’s words, Bears coach Ben Johnson has diversified his game plan to a point where opponents can’t necessarily focus their studies on any specific weapon.
What’s going to be on the test? Everything.
Johnson promised an amorphous offense that would “make the same things look different and different things look the same” and said figuring out how to get all the skill players involved each week is “what keeps me up at night.” Heading into the Bears’ game Friday at the Eagles, he’s doing a great job on both fronts.
The Bears rank eighth with 26.3 points per game and sixth with 369.6 yards per game, the best their offense has run in years, and the key has been variation.
There are obvious players who show up on the scouting report like quarterback Caleb Williams, wide receiver Rome Odunze and running back D’Andre Swift, but the ways and extents to which they’re used changes every week.
Odunze has asserted himself as the team’s No. 1 receiver and an ascending star in the NFL with 42 catches for 653 yards and six touchdowns, but he has a modest 24.1% of the Bears’ targets this season. For context, the Seahawks have concentrated 37.4% of their passes on receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
Four players have been the Bears’ most targeted in a game this season, and they’ve routinely had eight players have at least one pass thrown to them.
If the defense zeroes in on Odunze, Moore is more than capable of being Plan A. Rookie tight end Colston Loveland is emerging as a potential go-to option, too.
“He’s a reliable target and his body language when he’s running routes is very similar to a wide receiver,” Williams said. “It’s very smooth, it speaks to me very easily and I know when he’s breaking down, when he’s doing what. He’s also tall and a large human. That makes it a little bit easier to sometimes just maybe toss it up to him.”
The running game, which at 142.3 yards per game is second only to the Bills, has gotten more difficult to plan for as rookie Kyle Monangai has improved. Swift got 85% of the non-quarterback carries in the opener and 78% in Week 4, but has been between 38% and 65% the last three weeks.
Theoretically, Johnson would love to establish a combination like he had as Lions offensive coordinator with running backs Jahmyr Gibbs and David Montgomery. They had nearly identical shares of the carries when both were healthy last season.
From there, Johnson also sprinkled in occasional designed runs for Williams and wide receivers, predominantly Moore, getting the ball out of the backfield. The Bears have had up to six non-quarterbacks run in a game.
“Ben does a good job of mixing it up,” Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio acknowledged.
Johnson has often seemed dissatisfied with his own play-calling this season, but even as he adjusts to doing that while managing head-coaching responsibilities, there’s been a clear shift from the monotonous offenses of Shane Waldron, Luke Getsy, Bill Lazor and Matt Nagy.
It’s hard to know week-to-week which version of Johnson a defense will get. The Bears ran on 59.7% of their plays against the Saints in Week 6, their most this season, then ran a season-low 37.1% of the time the next week against the Ravens.
That’s without even getting into Johnson’s affinity for pre-snap motion, play action, unique formations and trick plays. It all works together to create a constant guessing game, and that’s exactly what he wants.