What can the Packers expect from the Bears this season?
By Todd Welter
What Packers can expect from Bears: Matt Eberflus’ HITS principle will guide Chicago.
The Bears went with a defensive-minded head coach to replace the offensive-minded Matt Nagy. Eberflus comes to the Bears after running the Indianapolis Colts’ defense for four seasons. Eberflus is the Bears’ fourth head coach since they fired Lovie Smith in 2012.
He is implementing two major changes to the Bears. The first change is the Bears’ defensive scheme going back to 4-3 base front that Aaron Rodgers carved up at the end of the Lovie Smith era. The second change is the team’s general philosophy on how they will play.
Eberflus is implementing his HITS principle. HITS is an acronym for hustle, intensity, taking away the ball on defense while taking care of the ball on offense, and smart-situational football. It sounds like something a high school coach would use to motivate the junior varsity team. He gets buy-in from players. At least, the players on defense.
It gets results as the Colts were second in the NFL last season in takeaways. The Bears only forced 16 turnovers last season, turned the ball over 29 times, and committed 106 penalties for 914 yards last season.
Eberflus is taking the CEO-type head coach route as he will not call the defense. Instead, defensive coordinator Alan Williams is the defensive play caller. Williams had a two-season run in 2012-2013 as the Minnesota Vikings’ defensive coordinator.
The Bears will also run the Tampa-2 defensive scheme. Eberflus and Williams will throw in some wrinkles like Single High and Cover 3 coverages. Eberflus expects to be playing his nickel package more than 80% of the game.
Like most defensive-minded coaches, Eberflus would prefer his offense run the ball more.
This would also fall under smart-situational football for a few reasons. First, the Bears lack explosive weapons at wide receiver. David Montgomery and Khalil Herbert can be a formidable one-two punch at running back. The Bears did draft Trestan Ebner out of Baylor who possesses big-play speed. Also, with the Bears potentially having four new starters on the offensive line from last season’s opening-game, running the ball can help ease the burden on the line as they try to gel together.
Finally, a run game is going to help Fields’ development. More about Fields later, but the run game will allow him to run more play-action and bootlegs to pick up big yards through the air.
Also, the run game follows the Kyle Shanahan/Sean McVay/Matt LaFleur offensive philosophy that Getsy comes from. Make no mistake about it, the Bears’ offense hopes to mirror what the Packers do on offense. It just may take until 2023 for the Bears to get there.
Eberflus is also doing something his predecessor was not known to do and that is being involved in all three phases of the team.
The hope is that Eberflus, acting as a CEO type head coach, will be able to attain the success that the Buffalo Bills and Tennessee Titans have achieved.