Chicago Bears Week 15: Rookie Report
Sunday’s win over the Browns wasn’t as impressive as the Bears week 14 win over the Cowboys and the rookies were less impressive as well. Jordan Mills and Khaseem Greene played one of their best games as Bears, but the rest of the rookies struggled.
Kyle Long RG: Long followed one of his best games of the season with one of his worst (-1.9). He was actually pretty solid in pass protection, only allowing 1 hit on Cutler and no sacks or hurries. Long’s run blocking was a different story. The Bears had success running everywhere on the line except behind Long’s right guard spot on Sunday. The Bears averaged 7.1 YPC everywhere else on the line and only 2.8 when running behind Long. Run blocking was Long’s strength early in the season, but he has struggled to create running lanes in three of the last four games.
Jordan Mills RT: After a rough patch from weeks 2-12, Mills has had three solid games in a row. After giving up close to 6 hurries per game for most of the season, Mills has only given up 7 total the last three weeks. He did allow 1 hit on Cutler, but no sacks and no penalties. His run blocking was solid as well; The Bears averaged 5.7 YPC on carries off RT. If Mills can keep this up over the next two weeks, I think it will solidify his starting spot next season.
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Jon Bostic MLB: He had a couple of nice stops verse the run in the first quarter, but really struggled as the game went on. He looked lost when the Browns ran a few plays out of the pistol formation and had a tough time in both run and pass defense most of the game. After three solid games in a row (weeks 9-11), Bostic has really struggled of late. You would like to see rookies get better as the season goes on, so this is a concern but maybe Bostic is just worn down. This is a much longer season than these guys are used to in college.
Khaseem Greene OLB: On the Browns first drive, Greene got caught out of position on a screen pass to Greg LIttle that resulted in a 44-yard play. Besides that, Greene played one of his best games as a Bear. He had one of the Bears two missed tackles and only had four tackles on the day, but two were on important third downs and Greene did a good job of keeping the Browns short passing game in front of him and not giving up any big plays to RBs out of the backfield.
David Bass DE: I’ve called for Bass to get more playing time based on his solid performance in short spurts. He got more snaps this week, but played poorly. Bass played just over a third of the Bears defensive snaps (22/61) and only registered one tackle and one QB hurry. Bass gave up contain on a Campbell 1st down scramble and struggled to hold the edge on a couple of outside runs. I would still like to see more of Bass and less of McClellin, but Bass didn’t do anything Sunday to prove he deserves more time.
Marquees Wilson WR: DNP 🙁
Michael Ford RB: DNP
Twitter: @MikeFlannery_