Chicago Bears: What Bill Lazor hire could mean for immediate future

1. Re-commitment to the run

Before I get into Lazor and what he might mean to the run game, I have to offer up a little speculation.

I cannot be the only one who wants to see the Bears find another complimentary back for David Montgomery. This offseason, I would love nothing more than to see Ryan Pace find a taker for Tarik Cohen via trade.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Cohen. But, I think we’ve passed his peak. If the Bears either sign or draft another guy with a bit more size (and still versatile enough in the passing game), Lazor, Nagy and the offense would benefit. They have to commit to the offense starting with their running backs in 2020.

Now, when you look at Lazor’s last season in the NFL, he was with the 2018 Bengals, of course. This was a season where they went 6-10 and saw Jeff Driskel start five games after Andy Dalton‘s season was cut short by injury.

That Bengals team saw Joe Mixon finish with over 1,100 yards rushing and also a fair amount of usage in the passing game. Now, don’t forget about Giovani Bernard, whom Cincinnati still liked to use on occasion. Between the two backs, they totaled almost 1,400 yards rushing, 514 receiving yards and 12 total touchdowns.

One specific stat I like out of this season: Mixon and Bernard combined for 103 targets in the passing game.

Lazor has experience getting usage out of his running backs, despite having to coach under Marvin Lewis — who was fired far too late in his career, to be honest.

I think Lazor brings a lot of necessary knowledge and experience of using backs in multiple ways, and the Bears will benefit greatly from that.