We are now just days away from seeing the first of this new-look Chicago Bears offense, headed up by new head coach Ben Johnson and first-time offensive coordinator Declan Doyle. They'll have a tough task for their first game, working together on a game plan, as they'll take on one of the best defenses in the Minnesota Vikings, led by defensive coordinator Brian Flores. Minnesota finished tied for 4th in sacks (49), 1st in interceptions (24), 2nd in passer rating allowed (82.4), and finished tied for 2nd in passing plays of over 40 yards allowed (4). With such a challenge ahead of them, they are looking at all avenues to give themselves an advantage, as Doyle spoke about during his Friday press conference. The first of which was how to use cadence to get an edge:
"On every given snap, anytime you're throwing the ball or running the ball, but specifically throwing it, we're in a race. The wideouts are in a race, really, with the D line. And so anytime you can give your guys a head start or slow them down, that can be a weapon that we can utilize," Doyle said. "Everything is so timing-related in the passing game, and the same thing with our get-off in the run game. And so, really trying to give our guys an advantage at all times. And making sure that he's consistent with that cadence, we vary it, and that's just something we work every day."
Second-year wide receiver Rome Odunze acknowledged that the race between the wideouts and the D-line and how important it is to win those matchups as fast as possible.
"At certain points, for sure. There are a lot of disguises and trickery that they do to confuse offenses, so you have to execute your assignments well," Oduzne said. "They have two great players over there (in Jonathan Greenard and Andrew Van Ginkle) coming off the edge, so you have to be aware of them and be quick in our routes."
Outside of just the tempo of the cadence is the tempo of the offense in general. How quickly do the Bears want to get to the line to throw off the Vikings' defense? It's much like in the days before the pitch clock in baseball, where a pitcher would either quick pitch the batter or take as long as they wanted to get the ball to the plate. It becomes a game, as Doyle said, of chess between the offense and defense.
"This is a scheme that provides challenges. I think it's always good to have a good tempo going to the line of scrimmage," Doyle said. "The earlier we get there, the more we might be able to help the quarterback, or whatever that may be. But certainly against a scheme like this that varies a lot, you want to be playing with good tempo as an offense."
One of the other tools of Johnson's offense has been the amount of presnap motion that is used to diagnose defenses. According to one methodology from Kaggle (as part of the NFL's Big Data Bowl), the Lions ran presnap motion, with over 80% of all their plays having some motion, by far the most in the league. Running motion that much, it makes it much more difficult for a defense to figure out what the offense will do because it creates an unpredictability that they now have to contend with. With unpredictability comes guessing, and with guessing comes showing your hand on blitzes. Which, against a team that blitzed 38.8% of the time in 2024, is much-needed for a young quarterback to identify.
"Yeah, it can, I think a lot of times with movement, as things change and pieces move, defenses have to, one, communicate, and secondly, a lot of times they have to show you and tip their hand a little bit because they don't know whether you are getting ready to snap it or you're going to move and get set, whatever that may be," Doyle said. "But yeah, a lot of times you can get a defense a little bit off balance and make them play left-handed just by moving guys around."
We'll see if these best-laid plans work out for the Bears on Monday night, but as of now, it seems they have solid plans to attack the league's best.