Windy City Gridiron
The Ben Johnson era is officially underway after the Chicago Bears tied the Miami Dolphins in their preseason opener, 24 to 24. Fans and content creators often rush to judgment based on preseason games, and while some important pieces of information emerged from that game, others are being overhyped right now and can largely be ignored. But what did we learn from the first preseason game of the year? Let’s dive into some observations and thoughts from the team’s performance.
At this point, anything we learned wasn’t very positive. Let’s start with Braxton Jones, who was largely awful. Braxton was beaten badly on a few reps, and the ones where he wasn’t beaten, his play looked largely uninspired with poor technique. Is Jones still recovering from his injury more than the team let on? I certainly hope so because what we saw against mostly second-teamers did not bode well for September at this point.
Ozzy Trapillo looked fine in his debut. He was rarely beaten, and most of his reps were solid. He played largely in the second half, which means most of his reps were against third and fourth stringers. You would have wanted to see him dominate the bottom end of a 90-man roster more than he did. So while he outperformed Jones, Jones played better competition, and neither looked fantastic.
There’s still plenty of time before the start of the regular season, but I think we all would have liked to see a better performance from both of them on Sunday.
I thought Ryan Bates played pretty well at center. If he is healthy, he will be the team’s top interior offensive line sub and, most importantly, Drew Dalman’s backup.
I also, admittedly, didn’t believe much in Luke Newman after watching his collegiate tape, but I was pleasantly surprised with Newman’s performance against Miami. He still shows very little power in his blocking, but he did a great job getting bodies on defenders. He does a nice job looking for work when he doesn’t have a rusher on his pass blocking reps, and as far as I could tell, he didn’t allow any pressures.
Newman did have a couple of rough reps in the run game, but overall, I was pleased with Newman. If Newman continues to play like this, I think the 9 offensive linemen on the Bears’ 53 in September are set. It’ll be Darnell Wright, Jonah Jackson, Ryan Bates, Joe Thuney, Braxton Jones, Ozzy Trapilo, Kiran Amegadjie, Ryan Bates, and Luke Newman.
I think there was a lot of rejoicing coming out of the running back room, but there’s a lot of concern there for me from what I saw.
I am not a believer in D’Andre Swift as an RB1. Roschon Johnson being banged up again isn’t a good sign for a guy who hasn’t been able to stay on the field consistently in his first...
