One of the biggest stories of the past 24 hours has been the injury status of Chicago Bears wide receiver Rome Odunze. He wasn't seen practicing Tuesday but was in the locker room, in good spirits, and walking around as if everything was normal.
The lower leg injury he sustained in practice last week is concerning, but even taking Odunze out of the picture, the Bears should have absolutely no problem scoring points against the Carolina Panthers.
The reason?
Two of the Panthers' three starting defensive linemen are nowhere near proficient against the run -- and Ben Johnson knows how to pound the rock.
A dominant Bears rushing performance would be exactly what the doctor ordered
Even if Odunze played on Sunday, he is likely not 100 percent. So, supplementing a passing attack down one of its top three weapons could be precisely what the Bears need to do.
Looking at the Panthers' front, you have Derrick Brown as the standout player. He's a good player and can handle himself against the run. However, if you slide over, you'll run into the nose tackle, Cam'Ron Jackson. The second-year pro only played a total of 85 snaps as a rookie, but the sample size provided enough for Pro Football Focus to give him a run defense grade of 45.4.
That is absolutely abysmal.
And, going back to Jackson's scouting reports coming out of college, the only hope he had for making it in the NFL was to turn into a great run defender -- which seems to be a work in progress, to put it lightly.
Jackson's scouting reports also suggest he gets blown off his anchor more often than not, which isn't going to bode well when going up against the likes of Joe Thuney, for one, or if he's even double-teamed for a split second before a Bears lineman heads up to the second level.
Then you slide over again across the Panthers' front and come to Bobby Brown, who played a total of 351 snaps last year and was given a run defense grade of just 57.8, again courtesy of PFF.
Sidenote: the Bears won't have to worry about (Bobby) Brown in the pass rush department, either, as he tallied only five total pressures last year.
But the point is, two-thirds of the Panthers' defensive line stink against the run. That's a recipe for the Bears to completely out-will Carolina on Sunday. This version of the Bears has a habit of doing exactly that, too. Just look at last year's Black Friday victory over the Philadelphia Eagles.
Oh, and by the way, that was the game these Bears ran for 285 yards as a team.
If and when the Bears do run all over the Panthers, that's going to take a whole lot of pressure off Williams, Odunze, and the rest of the offense. It'll be exactly what Odunze needed to start the season: just a little more time to get back to 100 percent, not having to be a deciding factor in this game.
It will also remind the general public that the Bears were a top-5 rushing team in 2025. With all of the talk about Caleb Williams and the passing game, people seem to have forgotten that D'Andre Swift and Kyle Monangai were one of the best backfields in all of football last year -- and people will soon remember after just one week.
This Panthers front being susceptible to the run could look real nice, too, before the Bears have to prepare for an exotic and dangerous Brian Flores defense when they take on the Minnesota Vikings in Week 2. By then, hopefully Odunze is feeling much stronger, because the Vikings will pose much more of a problem than Carolina will, in all aspects.
Read more: Colston Loveland hype train set to run into (or over) Devin Lloyd and Bobby Okereke
Moral of the story: Bears running backs to the moon in Week 1. Book it.
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