How Shane Waldron's tight end usage can take the Bears offense to new heights during the 2024 season
No one knows what the Chicago Bears offense is expected to look like under new offensive coordinator Shane Waldron.It's a great problem to have and based on the amount of weapons the unit has for their new play-caller to deploy in various packages, the Bears offense will truly be unpredictable all season long.While everyone has […]
No one knows what the Chicago Bears offense is expected to look like under new offensive coordinator Shane Waldron.
It's a great problem to have and based on the amount of weapons the unit has for their new play-caller to deploy in various packages, the Bears offense will truly be unpredictable all season long.
While everyone has been gushing about the Bears starting wide receiver trio and their high expectations, the tight ends on the Bears roster could be the ones to push the offense to new heights within Waldron's scheme.
Everyone should know by now how much Waldron values having multiple tight ends within his offense. That's exactly why the front office made the effort to add Gerald Everett and re-sign Marcedes Lewis to the room with budding star Cole Kmet.
With the Seattle Seahawks, Waldron utilized three tight ends successfully throughout the season with Noah Fant, Colby Parkinson, and Will Dissly. As a result, his unit saw the second-highest percentage of 12 personnel formations and the tenth-highest percentage of 13 personnel formations. With the talent the Bears have in the room heading into the 2024 season, that should be the expectation once again.
"I think it's gonna be a good situation this year," Everett said via ChicagoBears.com. "I think we're gonna have a lot of production. We're gonna have a lot of cohesion in our room. The sky's the limit for us — especially with Shane calling the plays."
Within the passing game, Kmet and Everett are going to each be consistent mis-matches for opposing defenses to cover while Lewis will slide back into his role as a dominant blocker on the line of scrimmage who could leak out on various plays.
Leading up to the 2023 season with the Seahawks, Waldron detailed how he was able to structure the offense with each of the tight ends he used, while still being able to rely on three solid wide receivers as well, which will translate perfectly with the weapons Waldron now has in Chicago.
"We got a group of guys right now that can do a little bit of everything," Waldron explained about his Seahawks unit in 2023. "The more tight ends can do, the more chances you can move them around and… present different looks for a defense. It makes it friendly for the tight ends in terms of getting out in the pass game, helping out in the run game, and doing a little bit of everything."
Once the season got started in Seattle, we were able to see exactly what Waldron was talking about with how he utilized his tight ends. Here's some plays in particular that worked out extremely well for the Seahawks tight ends in Waldron's offense.
On this play below against the Arizona Cardinals, Waldron used three tight ends in the formation (Parkinson, Dissly, and Brady Russell). Waldron motioned Parkinson across the formation and then sent Russell on a wheel route off the line of scrimmage, which allowed Dissly to cross over the middle of the field and an easy touchdown.
On this play, three tight ends were again used in the formation with Dissly being used in pass protection to block T.J. Watt (which would be the Lewis role in Chicago) while Parkinson and Fant each ran drags across the field at different levels. The play resulted in a big gain by Fant who Geno Smith found within the hole created in coverage.
This final play was more of a wild play-call drawn up by Waldron out of a three WR set that I hope ends up within the Bears playbook. The play had WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba orbit around Smith to get the defense moving away from an apparent running back screen pass. However, Parkinson faked the block for the screen and instead leaked up field for a fake-screen touchdown. This would be an incredible play for the Bears to implement with Kmet, D'Andre Swift, DJ Moore, Keenan Allen and Rome Odunze.
Clearly, Waldron loves to get creative with his play-calling and different looks he can throw at opposing defenses out of various formations with multiple tight end options. By having three veteran tight ends in the room with the Bears, he can look to do even more of this type of stuff within his new scheme this upcoming season.
How improbable would a race to 1,000 yards actually be for the Bears WR trio and who could get there first
It’s going to be exciting.
