Waldron breaks down offense in opener, will try to use Kmet more |
CHICAGO - Starting the season off with a 24-17 victory over the Tennessee Titans was a good start for rookie quarterback Caleb Williams to start his NFL career and for offensive coordinator Shane Waldron to start his time with the Chicago Bears. However, Waldron’s offense underperformed.
Nonetheless, there was a lot that Waldron took away from this game, both positive and negative. “For us on offense, starting with the no turnovers, we’re always going to take pride in that, being able to finish the game with flipping the field in a four-minute situation. Those were positives we were able to take away from the game and then we know throughout the flow of the game, we want to look to play, just like we talked about, as far as our expectations, of being where our feet are planted but playing a clean game from an operation standpoint,” Waldron said. “I think we can keep working to improve on that, playing with better tempo all throughout the course of the game and stuff that we’ll look to keep improving and there’s nothing like game reps for us as an offense to get out there, be able to come in the building on Monday and evaluate and talk through everything and, liked we talked about, expectations. Our main one is to get better each and (every) day that we’re out there.” Williams finished the game with 14 completions for 93 yards. He also had 15 rushing yards, including an 11-yard run on third down in the third quarter, which ultimately led to a 50-yard field goal from kicker Cairo Santos. The Heisman winner had some rookie mistakes throughout the game, including some overthrows. Waldron is confident that the offense will better complement the defense and special teams going into Sunday Night Football's matchup against the Houston Texans (7:20 p.m./NBC). “I think for him, just going out there playing with clean eyes, clean feet. First chance to get out into a road environment, which I’m sure it’ll be rocking on Sunday night, to be able to get to operate that way, great communication with his guys up front and the receivers and the running backs, tight ends, everyone supporting him and knowing that as an offense, we want to keep improving every single week and what’s that look like? Again, (the) results will speak for themselves as we go out there, work at it, clean it up. I think the thing that gives us so much confidence as coaches, as players, is you come in here on Monday, first of all, great week last week by our defense, by our special teams unit … When we’re moving forward this week, knowing each week, different units have to support each other, knowing that we have to do a better job of supporting our defense and our special teams moving forward and that’ll happen by just those incremental improvements, staying together, playing together. So, when we came out to practice (Wednesday), as an offense, the tempo that we operated at, the enthusiasm, the effort, the hustle (on) the backside, the blocks, all the things that on a Wednesday, if you have the right people, it looks like what it did (Wednesday),” Waldron said. “I think for Caleb it’s just about reps and the more time he’s out there …, the slower it becomes each week in and out and think I know Caleb had mentioned it, though, but the tempo of his feet. I think just playing with that good, clean tempo and mentioned clean eyes, clean feet and sticking to that and then that’ll obviously lead to an improved accuracy on a couple of throws here and there … We’ve seen him make all these throws throughout the course of practice, throughout the course of his college career and have all the confidence in the world that each week, that’ll get incrementally better and we’ll be excited what we see.” Of course, Williams was not the only player who was not playing up to Chicago’s standards for the offense in the season opener. The run game as a whole struggled to get yards, finishing with 84 rushing yards. Running back D’Andre Swift finished the game with ten rushes for 30 yards; 20 of those yards came off of one run. That starts with the offensive line, which will need to be better against Houston. “We always want to have that balance of the run and the pass. I think this past week, obviously, want to do a little bit better job of getting some more runs off and helping that and eliminating the negative plays,” Waldron said. “When you have sudden change situations or some things that occurred or (DeAndre Carter) has a really big kick return, we want to be able to get the runs going in those scenarios and I think for us, that’s just part of the offense as a whole of what we want to be as a balanced system and starting with running the ball and I think (offensive line coach) Chris Morgan and the offensive line, talking about a group that started (Wednesday) bringing the right attitude, bringing the right effort. Those guys set the tone for practice like they will every day, and excited to see what those guys go out and do this next week.” Another problem was tight end Cole Kmet's lack of usage. He only had one reception for four yards and played on 48 percent of the offensive snaps. Since 2021, that was only Kmet’s third game in which he was on the field for less than 65 percent of the offensive snaps. Conversely, for tight end Gerald Everett, he played 61 percent of the offensive snaps. “We know Cole is one of the top tight ends in the league. He has a great job for us. He’s done nothing but the right thing ever since I’ve been around him,” Waldron said. “So, that’s more on us and starting with me of getting the reps a little bit balanced out. But, it also goes back to playing efficient football and when we’re doing that, not getting tilted out of some of the ways we wanted to go into that game.”
