Devin Hester Admits Lockout Hurting Bears Offense
The greatest return man in NFL history sat down with WSCR’s Laurence Holmes to discuss the lockout, his offseason training, breaking the all-time return record and the impact of the new kickoff rules. It was a great interview with Devin Hester, so head over a give it a listen.
A few interesting points came up about the lockout and how it’s stunting the growth of the Bears offense:
"“Everybody started to understand the offense (at the end of the season),” Hester said. “Any offense you go into — it’s a new year — you’re not going to get it on the first day regardless of how hard it is. You know how big the playbook is. Nobody is going to step in the door in the first week and say they learned a new offense.“This lockout is kind of hurting us a little bit, but at the same time, the fact that we pretty much learned the whole playbook, now it’s just refreshing our memory and that’s what we are losing. We are losing the physical reps out there and I would say that is what is hurting us.”"
It will be really interesting to see how Hester, Knox and Bennett respond this season. Last year started off slowly, but the receivers came into their own as the season went on. I attribute a lot of that to Mike Martz and simplifying the offense to put his players in a position to succeed. Mad Martz got to know the types of receivers he had and tailored plays to get them the ball on slants, hitches and other quick-hitting plays while trying to get the ball out of Jay Cutler’s hands more quickly.
It will be important to build off of that and with a (hopefully) improving offensive line, start the stretch the field like they tried to do unsuccessfully at the start of last season.