We’re doing, position, by position, breakdowns, forever, come on and sing along…
PREVIOUS FIVE STARTERS: End – Mitch Unrein (2016-17), Jarvis Jenkins (2015), Will Sutton (2015), Jared Allen (2014), Lamarr Houston (2014). Tackle – Stephen Paea (2012-14), Jeremiah Ratliff (2014), Corey Wootton (2013), Henry Melton (2011-12), Matt Toeaina (2010-11)
The transition from ye olde style 4-3 defense to a more modern, 1992-style 3-4 has been an awkward one. That’s a lot of one-year starters, Jesus. I guess their whole plan was “Ray McDonald will never do anything bad again and will be our starter forever,” and they just never adjusted after he almost immediately reasserted himself as a big ol’ sack of shit. Things went to shit after the Pepppers/Idonije combo got broken up, and defensive end since the 2015 conversion seems to just be Akiem Hicks, plus whatever random castoffs and 4-3 defensive tackle retreads they can get to agree to the veteran minimum, while nose tackle has only ever been Eddie Goldman, and I should probably appreciate that more.
LAST FIVE PRO BOWLERS: Henry Melton (2012), Julius Peppers (2010-12), Tommie Harris (2005-07), Ted Washington (2001), Richard Dent (1984-85, 91, 93)
This looked a lot better than I thought it would l, but it got ugly once I realized that separating this into end and tackle would probably cause the list to stretch back to the 1950s. That nearly 20 year gap between Pro Bowl defensive ends is ugly, and a pretty big indictment of the Wannstedt/Jauron years. Of course, Akiem Hicks got robbed last year, but what can you do.
TECMO LEGEND: Richard Dent, Tecmo Bowl/Tecmo Super Bowl (8 and 16 bit versions) – “Overwhelm the center” is one of the easy paths to success in Tecmo defense, and the defensive end that lines up at the top of the screen is one of the best guys to do that with. When the center engages the nose tackle, bump into them with another guy, and more often than not, the center will go flying, leaving you free to make sure that digital Jack Trudeau doesn’t make it to his kid’s next birthday party. And while he wasn’t quite as good on either version of Super Bowl as he was on just plain Tecmo Bowl, Dent was usually fast enough to get to the center before another lineman could get to him, and sometimes, you want to use someone other than Mike Singletary, you know?
HISTORICAL GREATEST NAMES: DE – Ed Sprinkle (1944-55), DT – John Kreamcheck (1954-55)
The great thing about Ed Sprinkle is that, by all accounts, he was an absolute nightmare murder monster on the field, but had such a dainty-sounding name that they had to start calling him “The Claw” out of sheer necessity. “Ed Sprinkle” sounds like the name of a magical gnome with the power to make your garden flourish or some shit. I don’t know anything about John Kreamcheck, but it makes me imagine some alternate universe version of Blue Lives Matter/”avatar image of a dude holding a fish” social media, where instead of shitty man-cave dudes posting pictures of nasty microbrews, someone goes “cream check,” followed by a bunch of dudes posting pictures of big bowls of ice cream and the one dude gets made fun of for having an ice cream sandwich with part of the wrapper stuck to it. I wanna live in that world.
FANTASY BOOTLEG JERSEY: The easy play here would be to do the $90 “Uberklaw” jersey, but I’ve made far too many references to the O.G. version of Armchair Linebacker, and I’m trying to cut down. So I’m going to revisit Anthony “Spice” Adams’s 2012 YouTube tomfoolery, which began with the Bears letting him go, and ended with his retirement ceremony at the local White Castle, and pretty much justified the existence of the World Wide Web. In his honor, and disregarding all jersey character limits, (this is a fantasy, after all) I’m getting the shady Dark Web Chinese website to put together a #95 MY FIRST LOVE IS BASKETBALL ANYWAYS jersey. Starting that diet net week, though.
~~~~ 2018 EXPERT ANALYSIS ~~~~~
Reckoning With What We’ve Lost: Mitch Unrein, DE (signed with Tampa Bay)
Embracing What We’ve Gained: Bilal Nichols DE/DT (Rookie, 4th round pick)
What happened in 2017: At nose tackle, Eddie Goldman did the same thing he always does, which is make you go “oh man, this dude is gonna turn into a badass someday,” but then never actually hits the level of superstardom. Chances are, he never will, and will just “be really good someday” for another seven years or so, but hell, that’s better than what most can manage. They can’t all be ~~disruptive forces on the defensive interior~~ and tackling a dude a yard past the line of scrimmage is only two yards worse than getting him for a one-yard loss, you know? I guess the only concern here is that depth is nonexistent, on an “uhh, Goldman’s hurt? Just move an end over there, I guess” level. I mean, quality nose tackle depth is a massive luxury item, but it would be nice to at least have two on the team, you know? Aside from that, the middle of the line is fine, and will be fine, until Goldman’s rookie contract runs out and he signs with the Patriots or whatever.
At end, there’s the same concern – that there’s only one guy – but it’s way worse, because you need two defensive ends. In 2017, Akiem Hicks was a complete monster, a killer of dreams and destroyer of worlds for about 75% of the season, and then, he just got real, real quiet all of a sudden. The logical explanation for this is that on a team that refuses to pass the ball – and is usually on defense as a result – it’s a bad idea to ask a big ol’ 300-plus pounds dude to play on absolutely every single play. It felt like the dude never rotated out, probably because there wasn’t much to rotate in on his behalf. All the other guys, including the other starter, Mitch Unrein, were just some guys. They weren’t getting blasted into the secondary or anything on every play or anything like that, but “hopefully take up enough space to maybe free up a linebacker” is something that gets kind of embarrassing when the guy in the middle is making plays, and the end on the other side has eight sacks, you know?
What Will Happen in 2018: The Bears seem to be taking the video game RPG approach to things here, where I guess they figure Jonathan Bullard or Roy Robertson-Harris will just kind of level up as they gain experience, and one will emerge as a quality NFL starter, even though neither could supplant Mitch freaking Unrein last year. The only new guy is Bilal Nichols, and you never can tell with rookies, but I’m working under the assumption that a random 4th-rounder isn’t going to be the new J.J. Watt. Things will probably be slightly better than last year, if only because a fully-functional offense will probably keep the Bears from losing time-of-possession by 15-20 minutes in every game, but it’s still very much, Hicks, Goldman, and some guys out there. If either one of those two goes down, we’re fucked, and if something happens to both, we are fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked.
