The Bears haven’t been coy about where they want to improve this offseason.
They agreed to trades for guards Joe Thuney and Jonah Jackson before the start of free agency and then moved quickly to reach agreement with center Drew Dalman this week. The Dalman signing has not been officially announced yet, but the trades were processed on Wednesday and head coach Ben Johnson’s assessment of those moves could be extended to the Dalman move as well.
“We want some tough, some gritty, some dirty individuals, and we feel pretty good about the two guys we got,” Johnson said, via the team’s website. “‘Smart’ is a word that comes to mind, particularly with the interior players. We would love to have some versatility to our scheme, some multiplicity if you will. We’ve got a couple guys in the building now that we feel strongly can handle a variety of different concepts and schemes that we might want to employ each and every week. Beyond that, their play speaks for themselves in terms of what the tape says. The character, the integrity, it’s top notch. . . . Combined with the coaches that we’ve already put together for that room, I feel really good about the style of play we’ll have this year.”
New head coaches often talk about establishing an identity in their first year on the job. Johnson used different words, but the message behind the Bears’ early moves was pretty clear about what they want that identity to be.
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