Chicago Bears come away with an underrated outside linebacker signing

The Chicago Bears are going to need to be creative with how they fill in the back half of the 2021 roster. The team needs depth, but not just bodies, they need quality depth from players who can actually make an impact. Jeremiah Attaochu fits that bill.

Last season, the Bears brought in Barkevious Mingo. Many, myself included, thought he would be nothing more than a backend guy who would mostly see special teams snaps. Instead, Mingo saw 36% of the defense’s snaps as a rotational player. He finished the year with 2.5 sacks and 35 combined tackles.

Yesterday, the Chicago Bears signed Jeremiah Attaochu to a two-year deal. Terms of the deal do not seem to be available just yet, however bringing in Attaochu is an underrated move by the Chicago Bears that will likely go unnoticed.

Attaochu is not a household name. In fact, many Chicago Bears fans probably scratched their heads asking, “who is this guy”, when they saw the news. It turns out, Attaochu should be equal to or even a slight upgrade over Mingo.

Over the last two seasons, Attaochu has worked under Vic Fangio’s system in Denver. This should work out well for him as the Chicago Bears’ new defensive coordinator, Sean Desai, was Fangio’s right-hand man in Chicago before Fangio left for his head coaching gig in Denver.

Signing Jeremiah Attaochu was an underrated addition for the Chicago Bears

During his span in Denver, Jeremiah Attaochu finished with 5.0 (2020) and 3.5 (2019) sacks. He started five games in each of those seasons and saw a defensive snap share of 38% (2020) and 31% (2019). Look for him to see a similar snap count in Chicago as he did in Denver unless sophomore OLB Trevis Gipson steps up his game and takes over some of those snaps. Gipson only saw 7% of the defense’s snaps in his rookie season last year.

The only other two backup OLBs currently on the roster are Khalil Mack’s little brother Ledarius Mack (who I think is more of a traditional, 4-3 defensive end) and James Vaughters.

Attaochu will have an opportunity to carve out a solid rotational role behind Khalil Mack and Robert Quinn. The hope here is that Quinn returns back to his form in Dallas as he has not lived up to anything near his contract. Should he play like he did last year, maybe Attaochu will see even more playing time.

In 2015, his second year in the league, Attaochu saw 67% of the Chargers’ defensive snaps. He started 12 games while playing in 15. That season, Jeremiah Attaochu recorded six sacks, 17 quarterback hits and 55 combined (44 solos) tackles.

One area that Jeremiah Attaochu struggles with unfortunately is in the passing game. When he was targeted over the last two seasons, he allowed 100% of the passes to be completed when targeted (11 total passes). That said, the sample size is very limited and could easily have been little dump-off passes. Either way, this is a slight upgrade despite not many considering it one.