Weakest Link in the Bears Starting Defense

transplant · Post #1 » by **transplant** » Fri Jan 4, 2019 8:45 pm

I was thinking about this the other day and wonder what others think, but to be honest, I also want to make the point of just how strong the Bears D is.

The most obvious candidates are Jonathan Bullard (DE), Leonard Floyd and Adrian Amos. Bullard plays a position that gets zero credit. By all accounts, he does his job well.

Floyd has gotten a lot of heat for not becoming the dominant pass rusher for which he was drafted. I'm very high on Floyd and think fans and media miss two very important facts about Floyd. First, he played the first half of the season with a club on one hand. Second, Fangio more than almost any other DC in the league, only wants to rush 4 players. This ends up being the two DEs, the NT and one OLB. For obvious reasons, if you're only sending one OLB, it's going to be Mack because he happens to be the best in the world at what he does.

Amos gets very little love from the media and fans, but he tends to get a lot of respect from those like Pro Football Focus who grade players on how well they handle their respective responsibilities.

My pick would be Bullard, but I happen to believe that he's above average. If he's the weakest link, that tells you something about just how good this Bears defense is.

Susan · Post #2 » by **Susan** » Sat Jan 5, 2019 3:37 pm

transplant wrote:I was thinking about this the other day and wonder what others think, but to be honest, I also want to make the point of just how strong the Bears D is.

The most obvious candidates are Jonathan Bullard (DE), Leonard Floyd and Adrian Amos. Bullard plays a position that gets zero credit. By all accounts, he does his job well.

Floyd has gotten a lot of heat for not becoming the dominant pass rusher for which he was drafted. I'm very high on Floyd and think fans and media miss two very important facts about Floyd. First, he played the first half of the season with a club on one hand. Second, Fangio more than almost any other DC in the league, only wants to rush 4 players. This ends up being the two DEs, the NT and one OLB. For obvious reasons, if you're only sending one OLB, it's going to be Mack because he happens to be the best in the world at what he does.

Amos gets very little love from the media and fans, but he tends to get a lot of respect from those like Pro Football Focus who grade players on how well they handle their respective responsibilities.

My pick would be Bullard, but I happen to believe that he's above average. If he's the weakest link, that tells you something about just how good this Bears defense is.

I think Bulard is a part time player because he doesn't play in the nickle any. Goldman, Hicks are in there a good deal and they're elite IMO.

My gut says Prince is our weakest link. I think Floyd is disruptive at a pretty decent level and would be harder to replace than Prince. I think Tolliver is better than Isiah Irving but if we had to roll with Tolliver we wouldn't miss a beat whereas there'd be a slight dropoff with Iriving.