Bears rank 25th in pass protection

Assessing the effectiveness of pass protection is one of the most difficult things to determine in football. But Pro Football Focus has come up with a formula, and they ranked the Bears 25th out of 32 teams.

Their formula factored in everything from total pressure (a combination of sacks, hits and hurries) to the number of pass plays and the number of blockers per play.

The Bears were last in the NFC North. The Green Bay Packers were just ahead of them, at No. 24, the Detroit Lions were 20th and the Minnesota Vikings were eighth.

Here is what PFF said about the Bears:

* “The Bears were one of the teams that had only a couple of guys play well, whilst the others struggled and left their offense dead in the water. The “couple of guys” in this case were center Olin Kreutz and right guard Roberto Garza, with the rest being various shades of poor. None was worse than Orlando Pace and it was a huge mistake believing he had much left in the tank (he didn’t).”

* “Amazingly, as poor as a right tackle as Chris Williams was, he may end up being a success story if he can keep up his late-season form. Through the first 10 weeks of the season he was dreadful, giving up five sacks, eight hits and 24 hurries and throwing his hat in the ring as one of the worst pass protectors in the league. However, he did well against the Eagles in Week 11, did a reasonable job the next game (in Minnesota, of all places) and was then moved to left tackle to replace Pace, where he performed very creditably indeed.”

* “Other players who have to step up their game are Matt Forte, who stayed in to block a league-leading 152 times but was among the top five worst pass-protecting backs last year (two sacks, a hit and 15 pressures); and Greg Olsen, who may be a decent receiver but struggles with all aspects of blocking. That has to be a huge concern considering the offense Mike Martz is expected to implement.”

Here is the link to the analysis.

http://www.profootballfocus.com/articles.php?tab=articles&arc=&id=151