“Ya’ll Ready for this!?” Derrick Henry vs. Bears Front Seven.

So, while you have Jock Jams stuck in your head all weekend, the Bears have a tough task ahead of the them next week, as the bruising Tennessee Titans led by possible mutant/robot/alien Derrick Henry will host them in lovely Nashville. The last time of the Bears were here in 2012, Peanut Tillman forced four damn fumbles on his own, and a soon to be retired Brian Urlacher scored a touchdown. Nearly a decade later, this team has a good defensive vibe as well, but will also be arriving to the game with a M.A.S.H. unit of offensive lineman. Fear not, as last week the Bengals along with Joe Burrow’s perfectly coifed hair, were able to hold off the Titans, because apparently, they are the defensive equivalent of the Bears offense, or basically, they aren’t very good. At all.

Remember the Titans

I’ve checked out an occasional NFL game pass All-22 footage, and the wealth of those on Twitter who do twice as much as I do with their breakdown research, that I don’t feel the need to complain about the Bears offense. It’s a tire fire on multiple levels, each one interconnected to other. We get it. “Like I am literallllyyyy, over it.” Let’s talk about the surprising Titans offense, who are more than happy to roll out with a heavier lineup, by that I mean two tight ends. As the chart below will show, it isn’t their go to, but they use it more often than most of the NFL. Fancy enough, Tennessee has also found a reclamation project in former first round QB Ryan Tannehill, who has shown amongst others that playing QB is about accuracy and processing defenses, and not throwing the ball 80 yards.

-First Circle: *The operate out of three wide receivers which is just under half, but also in the bottom half of the league.*

-2nd Circle: *They are top 1/3 of the league in rolling out 2 TE or 2 WR’s.*

-3rd Circle: The Titans, Bears, Browns, and Giants (random?) are the only teams to run three Tight Ends more than 10$ of their plays.

With that heavier formation tendency, the Titans find themselves with their QB under center more often as well. Not so much frequency, but more in total snaps. With the proliferation of the shot gun formation in the past decade, (and to think we we’re all lunatics as we bitched while the Patriots rolled in shotgun with 3 receivers in 2007 as they eviscerated the NFL because they were mad they got caught cheating), the Titans like to come down and take a snap at the center’s butt, because frankly, it helps set up play action better. Also, other prominent offenses like the 49ers and Rams (well, before the former caught widespread injuries, and the latter got zero blitzed to all hell against the Dolphins) utilize under center snaps. Meanwhile, other squads like the Ravens and Cardinals don’t. Those two offenses are as different as night and day, even with similarly dynamic QB’s.

So like…under center….or like…nah, brah?

Here are the Bears through 7 weeks with the amount of the plays they’ve had under center vs shotgun. The Bears were under center in the first three games, and had some heavier TE packages when Trubisky started those games. They seemed to get away from this as the season has gone on under Foles.