The Bears need to do something to make Eddie Jackson good again.

[soulman]

Chicago Bears: Is it time to change Eddie Jackson’s position?

by Dominique Blanton 1 hour ago Follow @NiqueBlanton

https://dawindycity.com/2021/09/15/chicago-bears-position-change-eddie-jackson/?utm_campaign=FanSided+Daily&utm_source=FanSided+Daily&utm_medium=email

 

The Chicago Bears got trounced by the Los Angeles Rams in the week one opener led by Matthew Stafford. The defense did not have an answer for the explosive passing attack of the Rams as the unit gave up multiple big plays down the field. This should not be a big shock to Bears fans who have been following the team throughout training camp. The secondary was on top of the list of areas that were a concern for the team.

The secondary was the main culprit, specifically the safeties. Neither guy had a great game but all eyes are on Eddie Jackson who continues to not look like the All-Pro we all knew back in 2018.

Once touted as the next Ed Reed after his 2018 season, once that extension was signed the regression clock started. We as fans have witnessed the various stages of Jackson’s career. He was an All-Pro level Free Safety in 2018 and became a below-average defender with a horrible contract currently in 2021.

It has been a huge fall from grace for Jackson and one must wonder if he is playing his way out of Chicago. So could a change in the starting lineup be happening soon? If Jackson continues this year with similar performances, the coaches will need to make a tough decision. Do they put a safety that is currently the fifth highest-paid at his position on the bench?

The Chicago Bears need to do something to make Eddie Jackson good again.

At some point, head coach Matt Nagy will need to hold players that are not performing up to their contracts accountable. If at the very least, his coaches must put him in a better position to make plays. One crazy suggestion is making him the team’s nickel back in their sub-packages. The thinking behind this idea is that it gives him more opportunities to make plays on the football.

If you’re defensive coordinator Sean Desai, knowing you have issues at Nickelback and safety, you could experiment with Jackson as your slot CB and make Tashaun Gipson and Deon Bush your starting two safeties. Of course, they should give this time and see how it all plays out after a few weeks so they can see if Jackson is playing better at his natural position.

However, this position change could further extend Jackson’s career and allow him to play at an elevated level late into his career. In today’s NFL, the nickel position is gradually becoming more premium than the safety position. Considering more than half the time you are closer to the play than at safety, Jackson could be an x-factor from the Nickelback spot.

Tyrann Mathieu is the gold standard of a safety that moved to nickel and excelled. Before they feel tempted to have all that money sitting on the bench, the coaches should call Jackson into the office and propose why this position switch will make him a better player. Otherwise, if Jackson does not improve his play at safety and is not a fan of a position switch, 2021 could be his last in a Bears uniform.

[soulman]

I can't see this idea working out well at all and any comparison of EJax to Tyrann Mathieu is worthless.  Honey Badger plays a contact style game.  EJax plays like he's made of tissue paper and will break if he has to make a hard tackle on a guy coming at him upfield.  EJax play way too soft.

So how does the idea of moving a guy to a position where he'll need to be an even better open field tackler make any sense?  It's not that Jackson can't tackle.  He even posted a rant about it when someone criticized him over it.  The problem is Jackson won't tackle.  He's been playing like he's a prima dona China doll deep coverage guy and he's not even doing that well any longer.

And if he's the guy responsible for calling out coverage for the secondary he either needs to get his **** together or someone else needs to do it because that was a clown show against LA.....a major embarrassment really.  He's one more guy with a big cap number and a ton of dead cap we're probably stuck with through 2022 unless we trade him and if so who replaces him?

[Madmike90]

The change that needs made is for us to stop being so vanilla when it comes to how this defence plays overall...we do nothing to try and put any of our playmakers in an advantageous position...as much as Jackson needs to get his head back in the game he also needs to be allowed to play deeper in the center field with a more attacking front seven in front of him...

Even worse for me than Jackson is Khalil Mack...we line him up at LOLB/LE on nearly every play...we ask him to rush on the outside shoulder of the OT on nearly every play...we barely ever try and run any games with our DL to get him free...it is a complete failure in the scheme for both these guys and others...the only playmaker the scheme seems to work for is Roquan.

[abstract_thought]

IIRC Fangio is famous for running a vanilla defense without much blitzing. He also runs a lot of Cover 2 and Cover 6, both of which use a deep half safety. So even at his best, Jackson was not used as a deep-lying, center field FS. He was most often playing half the field.

Part of the issue may be coaching, but blaming Jackson's performance on coaching seems like the easy way out of a larger problem. His effort is horrible and his tackling is horrible. Those issues aren't related to coaching. He's paid like a top 5 S. He needs to be showing that on the field and acting like a leader.

[Madmike90]

1 minute ago, abstract_thought said:

IIRC Fangio is famous for running a vanilla defense without much blitzing. He also runs a lot of Cover 2 and Cover 6, both of which use a deep half safety. So even at his best, Jackson was not used as a deep-lying, center field FS. He was most often playing half the field.

Part of the issue may be coaching, but blaming Jackson's performance on coaching seems like the easy way out of a larger problem. His effort is horrible and his tackling is horrible. Those issues aren't related to coaching. He's paid like a top 5 S. He needs to be showing that on the field and acting like a leader.

Fangio's defence has never been vanilla...sometime I think people get confused with defences that are "bend don't break" and "vanilla"...Fangio would let you move the ball between the 20's but get into the red zone and suddenly Fangio had play design to hold teams to 3 or turn the ball over...the drop off between Fangio leaving and Pagano getting here was obvious...Pagano's defence was extremely vanilla and didn't have those impact plays every drawn up...the defence between the 20s was the exact same as in the redzone...Desai was suppose to get us back to being aggressive and again I understand that it was week 1 and the Rams but we need way more that he gave us as a play caller and most importantly as a coordinator who isn't going to allow three blown coverages to happen week after week.

[soulman]

Yeah, I wouldn't call Fangio's defenses vanilla at all.  He's very clever at disguising his actual coverage and since Desai is a Fangio disciple I assume we'll see more of the same which in some ways may have led to the confusion and coverage snafus on Sunday night. 

If they show one coverage pre-snap then shift post snap someone needs to be making those calls just as an OC is typically counted on to make calls for the OL.  So the question is who was calling defensive signals for the secondary and kept screwing up?  Smith?  EJax?  Gipson?

As far as Macks rush lane is concerned if Hick is playing next to him I assume they aren't gonna stunt with him and Mack.  Akeim is a bull and not all that nifty so he's gonna just bull rush the QB and collapse the pocket.  Mack is out there to cut off an escape route to the QB's right.

Like I've posted.  We should give some credit to both the LA OL and to Stafford.  He's an experienced QB whose played the Bears often and in some cases he found some room to step up and on other deeper passes he was taking a deeper drop to buy a little more time for the WR to come free.

I don't deny that the rush could have been more effective but McVay knew what he was up against and had a great game plan to work around it. Our problem is our HC isn't Sean McVay or even marginally close to him as an offensive coach.  IMHO that's our real problem.

[abstract_thought]

1 hour ago, Madmike90 said:

Fangio's defence has never been vanilla...sometime I think people get confused with defences that are "bend don't break" and "vanilla"...Fangio would let you move the ball between the 20's but get into the red zone and suddenly Fangio had play design to hold teams to 3 or turn the ball over...the drop off between Fangio leaving and Pagano getting here was obvious...Pagano's defence was extremely vanilla and didn't have those impact plays every drawn up...the defence between the 20s was the exact same as in the redzone...Desai was suppose to get us back to being aggressive and again I understand that it was week 1 and the Rams but we need way more that he gave us as a play caller and most importantly as a coordinator who isn't going to allow three blown coverages to happen week after week.

I'm not sure what you mean by aggressive, but the Bears blitzed more under Pagano than under Fangio:

https://www.si.com/nfl/bears/news/number-say-bears-defense-not-much-different-under-pagano

[Madmike90]

3 minutes ago, abstract_thought said:

I'm not sure what you mean by aggressive, but the Bears blitzed more under Pagano than under Fangio:

https://www.si.com/nfl/bears/news/number-say-bears-defense-not-much-different-under-pagano

Quote

While the Bears blitzed 146 times last year, individual players blitzed 244 times. So they had multiple players blitzing far more often. Fangio had only used 187 blitzers on his 140 blitzes.

All the blitzing only got the Bears 32 sacks, ranking 24th overall. The previous year they sacked quarterback 50 times, third most.

Right there is the difference between blitzing and effective blitzing...Pagano might have sent more blitzers but it was highly ineffective in comparison to Fangio...aggressiveness is not about sending everyone all the time...aggressiveness is about hitting the button at the right time and making it count.

[soulman]

And now we return to our regularly scheduled programming covering Eddie Jackson whose never been used to blitz the QB period.  😜

[Sugashane]

4 hours ago, soulman said:

And now we return to our regularly scheduled programming covering Eddie Jackson whose never been used to blitz the QB period.  😜

Likely would be as effective as Quinn is at rushing the QB the last year.

[soulman]

2 hours ago, Sugashane said:

Likely would be as effective as Quinn is at rushing the QB the last year.

I didn't see much of the game but Quinn was credited with half a sack and it looked like he was getting some pressure at times.  Let's hope whatever happened last year is never repeated by a guy we gave a $30 mil gtd deal to.

But I also posted in another thread that those two LA OT are both 6'8"/330lbs and Whitworth is LA's version of Jason Peters only much taller and Havenstein is one of my UW Badger guys I wish would have fallen to us in the 3rd round in 2015.   We got a booby prize instead.....Grasu.

So we had two 250-260lb OLBs going up against two of the better and more experienced OTs in the NFL and an experienced QB who was getting the ball out pretty quickly.  You're not gonna get home all that often against those odds.

[Heinz D.]

They need to replace Jackson with a clone that can actually play football well.

Best option. 

[Bfan]

 

17 hours ago, soulman said:

I didn't see much of the game but Quinn was credited with half a sack and it looked like he was getting some pressure at times.  Let's hope whatever happened last year is never repeated by a guy we gave a $30 mil gtd deal to.

But I also posted in another thread that those two LA OT are both 6'8"/330lbs and Whitworth is LA's version of Jason Peters only much taller and Havenstein is one of my UW Badger guys I wish would have fallen to us in the 3rd round in 2015.   We got a booby prize instead.....Grasu.

So we had two 250-260lb OLBs going up against two of the better and more experienced OTs in the NFL and an experienced QB who was getting the ball out pretty quickly.  You're not gonna get home all that often against those odds.

I`ve heard a couple of people say Quinn looked better last week then he ever did all of last year. (I know low bar) That  combined with the Bengles OL still kind of sucks hopefully results in more preasure and more preasure maybe helps Jackson on the back end.

[soulman]

1 hour ago, Bfan said:

 

I`ve heard a couple of people say Quinn looked better last week then he ever did all of last year. (I know low bar) That  combined with the Bengles OL still kind of sucks hopefully results in more preasure and more preasure maybe helps Jackson on the back end.

I'd like to say I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt but it's really more like show me something that makes me believe you aren't the worst FA signing of this decade.

[WindyCity]

Can they go back in time and unpau him?

Eddie’s wallet got heavy and he got soft.