Windy City Gridiron
The Chicago Bears demonstrated in 2024 that they had significant coaching deficiencies that they addressed by hiring Ben Johnson as Head Coach and Dennis Allen as defensive coordinator. However, it wasn’t all coaching. Some glaring holes were clear on the roster, particularly on the offensive line. Thus, a question arose, how well did Ryan Poles address those deficiencies in free agency, and how well did the Chicago Bears stack up with the NFC North, going into the 2025 NFL Draft?
In order to answer that question, I have turned to Pro Football Focus’s individual offensive and defensive player ratings. PFF gives a rating for each player in the NFL based on their performance last season. So, we could just average the PFF rating for each player at each position to get an average PFF for the four teams in the NFC North and compare them. However, the problem with that approach is that certain positions on the football field are more important than others. It is objectively true that it is much better, and much more impactful, to have a 90 player at quarterback than it is to have a 90 player at punter.
So, I have applied weights to the 22 individual positions in football to use in our calculation of the average PFF scores for each team. While the individual value chosen is inherently arbitrary, the relative numbers reflect the objective values of the respective positions. For example, I weighted the QB position at a “9” while the CB1 position rated a “5” and the Strong-side linebacker in a 4-3 was given a “2” weight.
I did weigh the 3-4 and 4-3 defensive positions differently, based on their respective values within that defense. Obviously, there is nuance lost in such an approach (as we can plainly see with the difference in scheme between Dennis Allen’s 4-3 defense and Matt Eberflus’s 4-3). I further had to fill in some missing data – because some positions are slotted by the respective teams for a rookie contributor, or a player who did not receive significant snaps in 2024. The most glaring example is J.J. McCarthy for the Minnesota Vikings. I took a uniform approach to all such positions – I assigned a PFF score of 60 to that position.
Most rookies struggle to put up PFF scores above 60 in their rookie campaigns, so this seemed a ‘fair’ number to use in the few cases there was no veteran to use. However, it must be acknowledged as a potential drawback in the analysis. Many teams are planning on replacing veterans with rookies, and whatever those projections might be, they are not included in this analysis. And lastly, there is no projection in the PFF scores themselves – this is historical data from 2024. There is no accounting for regression – be it positive (player gets significantly better) or negative (player gets significantly worse). With all of the caveats out of the way, let’s look at the numbers.
