The Chicago Bears finally got themselves a win with a dominant performance over the Washington Commanders. Bears fans can feel good this weekend, but the team sits at 1-4 and has work to do to dig out of this hole. With a division game coming up next week, what are some questions that came out of the win?
10. Was it bad defenses, or is Justin Fields playing better for the Chicago Bears?
The past two weeks are quite easily the best two weeks that Justin Fields has put together in his career. Some of it should be expected when you consider he is getting better every week, and they are his most recent games. Still, after the start of the season, it looked like he was lost and could not be saved.
So, the question is, did Fields find something, or did he just so happen to play some really bad defenses? According to RBSDM, the Green Bay Packers rank 12th in passing defense, while the Buccaneers rank 7th, and the Kansas City Chiefs rank 5th. On the flip side, the Denver Broncos rank 32nd in passing expected points allowed, and the Washington Commanders rank 27th.
So, Justin Fields played well against bottom five pass defenses and played badly against top 12 pass defenses. How will he look against average units?
9. Is Greg Stroman turning into a player for the Chicago Bears?
Greg Stroman has been a story worth following. He played well as a rookie back in 2018, but he has been injured almost every year since then. He fought hard to stay in the NFL, and he made the Chicago Bears practice squad last season.
Now, he is fully healthy and has been for over a year. This has allowed him to get his chance with injuries to both Kyler Gordon and Josh Blackwell. Greg Stroman has played well. At first, you thought it was because the Chiefs did not have good wideouts, and the Bucs focused on Mike Evans.
However, Stroman had his best game against Washington, his former team in 2018. He had a sack and an interception. The sack stopped a Washington drive and held them to a field goal, and the interception led to Bears points.
These are bigger plays than Kyler Gordon has ever made. When Gordon gets back, he should start, but Stroman is playing well, and when he was healthy in 2018 he had potential, so he is worth following for Chicago Bears fans.
8. Is Teven Jenkins giving the Chicago Bears a spark they need?
Teven Jenkins was activated this week but did not start for the Chicago Bears. However, an injury to Lucas Patrick pushed him into the lineup for 37 snaps. The Bears even tried to shuffle in Ja'Tyre Carter, but it was clear that Teven Jenkins had no rust and was ready to play.
It was only 37 snaps, but he may already be the Chicago Bears best offensive lineman. When you add in that Nate Davis is finally back and looks better, and he is gelling with Darnell Wright, the Chicago Bears offensive line just got better pretty quickly overnight.
This may not be the unit we thought that we would see, mainly because Braxton Jones is unlikely to play this year. Still, this is the closest the line has been to what we have wanted the entire time. This is good news for the Chicago Bears.
Will the health continue, and will the emergence of both Jenkins and Davis set off a chain reaction that makes this line competent for the rest of the season?
7. Should the Chicago Bears keep moving Yannick Ngakoue around?
Early into the season, the Chicago Bears just had Yannick Ngaokoue lined up on the left tackle. However, in the last two weeks, the Bears saw Mike McGlinchey and Andrew Wylie on the right side and Garrett Bolles and Charles Leno on the left. The team could keep DeMarcus Walker on the weaker tackles, but they knew he would not take advantage.
So, in the past two weeks, they have played Ngakoue on both sides a lot more. He played 31 snaps against right tackles in the last two weeks after 36 snaps in the first three weeks. They are starting to move him around a bit more.
It makes sense because the Bears were supposed to be a defensive line that wins with depth as much as talent. They should be shuffling these guys and getting them in the right matchups. The Bears slid DeMarcus Walker inside more this week than ever before, and they brought in Rasheem Green to play inside a bit as well. There needs to be more rotation and shuffling, and it is good we saw that on Sunday.
6. What is the status of the Chicago Bears running back injuries?
By the end of the Chicago Bears win against the Washington Commanders, they did not have a running back. Roschon Johnson left the game early with a concussion, and Travis Homer left with a hamstring injury. Khalil Herbert was the man for a bit, but an ankle injury sidelined him.
He tried to come back in but needed to come out immediately after. The reports and the quotes from Herbert are that the injury is not that bad. He expects to play next week, especially after a longer time to heal.
However, with Johnson, it is hard to see him coming back with a concussion, especially with the new rules. He has more time than most, but most concussions call for sitting out a week. A hamstring injury could be multiple weeks for Travis Homer.
Does that mean that we will see D'onta Foreman active again next week? The team does not have depth on the practice squad, but Trestan Ebner is a free agent. Does he get a call this weekend?
5. Is Gervon Dexter seperating from Zacch Pickens as the top Chicago Bears rookie defensive lineman?
Thursday was the best game for a lot of Chicago Bears, but one player in particular was Gervon Dexter. Dexter played 33 snaps and had six pressures, per PFF. He was one of their highest-graded players. This is notable because after playing 33 snaps in week two, Dexter played just 36 snaps in the following two games combined.
The Bears promised he would play more this week, and we saw that come to fruition. It is interesting to note because the same cannot be said for Zacch Pickens. Pickens played 14 snaps, which is more than the nine he played in week four, but it was not much compared to Dexter.
A lot of this comes down to the pass-rushing upside. Dexter is a pass rusher with more juice, and Pickens is better against the run. The Bears got a lead, so Dexter was cutting into snaps of Andrew Billings, the Bears' best run defender.
Still, it is clear who is the better defender of these two. Pickens was drafted later because he did not have the ceiling of Dexter. Dexter has not reached his ceiling, but he is already better than Pickens, which is good to say for the player who was supposed to take longer to develop.
4. Will the Chicago Bears continue to lean on their heavy personnel?
Another interesting difference from the Chicago Bears win over the Washington Commanders was their offensive personnel. A lot of this has to do with losing Chase Claypool and Equanimeous St. Brown during the game.
Still, from the start, Robert Tonyan was on the field, and Tonyan ended up with the third most yards on the team, behind Cole Kmet and D.J. Moore. Yes, it was only ten yards, but when two tight ends are in the top three yards, it does say how your offense is being built.
Tonyan averaged ten snaps per game with Chase Claypool and 20 snaps per game without him. Even Marcedes Lewis is being used more. Marcedes Lewis is averaging 21 snaps per game in this span after just seven per game early on.
It could be because of the lead, and for Khari Blasingame, the injuries to the running backs added to this. However, he played 26 snaps on Thursday, his season-high. He played 41 snaps over the last two weeks, and that is compared to just 17 in the first three weeks. That is a little more than just the game situation dictating it. It is a shift in how the Bears want to play. Will Tonyan, Lewis, and Blasingame have enough to fill in for what they thought they had in Chase Claypool?
3. Is Tremaine Edmunds officially a bad signing for the Chicago Bears?
Thursday night was so fun because so many players got to release their frustration. The pass rush got home, and Gervom Dexter stepped up. Tyrique Stevenson made plays against Terry McLaurin, and Terell Smith looked confident.
Justin Fields and D.J. Moore have their mojo back, and the offensive line looked good. Then, there is Tremaine Edmunds. If you watch Edmunds, he is still playing poorly. He is missing tackles, he is overdiagnosing some plays, and he is far too slow to diagnose others.
He is not helping the team in any way, and more than that, you could argue he is hurting the team. It is five games, he did not have much preseason time, and the rest of the unit has been shuffling around him. Still, he is a high-paid star. He came to a team known for linebackers, and he signed with Matt Eberflus, a former linebackers coach. He has to be so much better to pay off what the Chicago Bears thought of him. So far, he has been the biggest disappointment of the year.
2. Do the Chicago Bears have a WR to trust behind DJ Moore?
The D.J. Moore performance will be talked about by Chicago Bears fans for years. Our grandkids will see his record broken at some point, and we will say oh yes, that fun Thursday Night game. Still, there is a little concern that no other wide receivers got in on the fun.
The Washington Commanders secondary is awful. DJ Moore had 67 yards against Kendall Fuller, 58 yards against Benjamin St. Juste, and 76 yards against Emmanuel Forbes. He lit all three of the Commanders top cornerbacks up with ease. Where was everyone else?
Equanimeous St. Brown got hurt. Velus Jones is not a wideout and Tyler Scott is coming along slower than some fans want. Slower than some fans want Equanimousis a good way to describe Darnell Mooney right now, too. He was coming off a lower-body injury last year and it looks like it is impacting him still. Justin Fields had a shot at him and missed, and beyond that, he was quiet.
It is great that Moore beat this group down, but other teams will focus on him and force another wideout to win. Is that when the wheels fall off again?
1. Should the Chicago Bears bench Elijah Hicks?
One small disappointment from the Chicago Bears win was Elijah Hicks. Hicks is a former seventh-round pick who went from special teams to start because of the injury to Eddie Jackson. Still, his last two weeks have not been good. Hicks has a bunch of missed tackles, he gave up a huge pass to Marvin Mims deep, and he was in coverage for both of the Commanders touchdowns on Thursday.
The Chicago Bears do not have an update on Eddie Jackson, but they are missing him in the worst way right now. His play cost them against Denver, and it kept Washington in this game. It cannot hold up against better teams. The Chicago Bears signed Duron Harmon off of the Baltimore Ravens practice squad. If Jackson is not back for the Vikings game, do they roll with Harmon over Hicks?
They cannot have Hicks out there for TJ Hockenson, Jordan Addison, and Justin Jefferson going over the top on him. This will be worth monitoring throughout the week to see if Harmon or Jackson are ready.