Chicago Bears: Roquan Smith deserves credit for Sunday

Roquan Smith deserves credit for the way he played in the Chicago Bears loss to the New Orleans Saints.

The Chicago Bears were pretty bad all around against the New Orleans Saints. They had a chance to win the football game but they deserved to lose. The aftermath of the game is giving the Bears a lot of negatives but there was a positive to be happy about. Roquan Smith was awesome for the entire game. He is part of that great defense and a major part of their success now. The hope now is that he is able to sustain that great play.

When he was drafted out of Georgia, a lot of people were excited. He was so great there and you can even argue that he was the best prospect going into that draft. He fell to the Bears because other teams needed different positions. He had ups and downs through his first few seasons but as of now, he is by far their best first-round pick in the Ryan Pace era (that isn’t saying much).

He has been putting together some good games here in 2020 and the game against the Saints was the latest. He had nine tackles and two assists for 11 combined tackles. Two of those were for a loss and he added in a pass deflection. It was a great game to try and help this defense keep the other team off the board.

The unit as a whole wasn’t completely awful but they didn’t have their best game of all time either. There are great players all over the defensive roster but they need to come together as they did in 2018. The annoying part is that Smith has become that much better than he was as a rookie in 2018 but the defense has taken steps back as a whole. They really need to look in the mirror sometime soon and realize that they need to be even better.

The good news is that he is only 23 years old and should be around for a long time. The hope is that he continues to improve and become a superstar NFL linebacker. The potential is there for him to do so and there is plenty of talent around him to help. We know that it is a shame that the offense gives the defense no support but Smith is doing his job up to this point.

Smith and the rest of the defense need to come up big against the Tennessee Titans this weekend. It is a huge game because if they lose three in a row after starting 5-1, they will start to really doubt themselves. We can’t (and shouldn’t) expect the offense to turn the corner in a week so it would be nice to see Smith keep this going to help his defense win a football game.