Bears: Stop blaming the defense

In a frustrating season, the Chicago Bears defense is not to blame for their struggles.

It has been an incredibly frustrating and disappointing season for the Chicago Bears, and there certainly hasn’t been a shortage of blame to go around. The offense has been abysmal. They are in the bottom five of the league in almost every offensive category — averaging only 18 points and 262 yards per game. By contrast, the league’s best offense (the Kansas City Chiefs) are averaging more passing yards (313) than the Bears are averaging total.

Fans have pointed the fingers at a variety of sources, including the quarterback, the head coach, the offensive line, and even the offensive coordinator despite not calling plays.

It’s fair to say fans are looking for someone or something to pin the blame on, and it seems no one is safe from their wrath. That goes for the defense too, which has surprisingly taken a lot of criticism this year.

Heck, I’ll even concede I’ve been guilty of it at times, but that was until I stepped back and looked at their performance objectively.

Look, would it be nice to get more impact plays out of Khalil Mack like he made last year? Yes. Did we come into the season with higher expectations for Leonard Floyd? Of course. Have Eddie Jackson and Kyle Fuller seen a precipitous drop in interceptions and forced fumbles? You betcha.

But what also would be nice is if the team didn’t lose Akiem Hicks for almost the entire season, or if Roquan Smith wasn’t going through a personal issue which seems to have impacted his performance.

Despite facing some injuries and adversity, the unit has played pretty darn well. However, they may be a victim of fans unreasonable expectations based on last year’s otherworldly performance.

They are still a top ten ranked defense overall and are giving up the fourth-fewest points in the league at 17.4. They are doing all this despite getting virtually nothing out of their offense, being on the field much more often (the Bears rank 28th in time of possession) or playing opposite an offense with the second-worst 3 and out rate according to footballoutsiders.com.

Last season they put the offense in advantageous situations. The expectation is the offense was going to take a step forward to offset a decline in the turnover forced rate from last season which was obviously unsustainable. But they haven’t, and so it’s fair to wonder whether the offense truly regressed this year or if they were just as bad last year, but that was masked by an opportunistic defense.

However, make no mistake, this defense is playing very well. Are they playing well enough to overcome an anemic offense? No, but few defenses — even the historic ones — could compensate for this kind of offensive futility. So when you’re looking to assign blame for this season, don’t look in the defense’s direction.