Bears confident offensive line will rebound from poor outing

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BOURBONNAIS, Ill. – While the offensive line remains a work in progress, the Bears aren’t panicking after the starting unit allowed five sacks in the first half of last Saturday night’s preseason loss to the Oakland Raiders.

“The first thing that I look at is, ‘Are we improving every day and are we improving each week when the week comes to a close?’” said veteran offensive line coach Mike Tice.

“We had a couple individual plays by players that were not up to par and not up to what we expect. We have to continue to work on whatever it is—technique, timing with hands—to get better. We’re still in training camp/preseason mode, so we do have some time.

“The biggest thing that I look at to judge where the group is to me that really burns me or doesn’t burn me is how many mental errors we have, and we’ve been able to minimize those, so they’re getting what we’re asking them to do.”

The most glaring errors against the Raiders were committed by left tackle Chris Williams, who got beat cleanly for two sacks on speed rushes by defensive end Kamerion Wimbley.NFL jerseys

“I think with Chris it’s an aberration,” said offensive coordinator Mike Martz. “I see him every day out here [at practice]. I don’t know what happened to him. When I look at him on tape, the technique and everything is just not who he is.

“I know Mike [Tice] has talked with him and they worked through that. But a young tackle will go through that, and he has to fortunately experience that in the preseason. Imagine if that was a regular-season game. You need to fight through those things.

"[In the preseason] you put him in one-on-one situations and hang him out to dry a little bit and make him be on the edge by himself and get used to being under the spotlight and dealing with it.

“You’re always concerned when you have sacks. There’s no question about it. But from what we see out of those guys out there in practice every day against what’s a real good front, I think they’ll be just fine, I really do. It was a little unsettling because that’s not Chris. If I felt like that’s who he was, that would be very unsettling. But I don’t believe that’s the case.”

Quarterback Jay Cutler, who played with Williams at Vanderbilt before the two were reunited with the Bears, did not feel the need to give the third-year pro a pep talk following Saturday night’s game.wholesale nfl jerseys

“He’s a professional,” Cutler said. “He’s been in the league long enough. He knows what we expect out of him, which is very big things. He’s our left tackle. He’s a first-round pick. I’ve played with him many years, so he knows all our expectations are high, and I don’t think anyone has higher expectations for Chris than himself.”

Cutler generally doesn’t spend a lot of time during games dealing with offensive line issues. He leaves that in the capable hands of veteran center Olin Kreutz.

“I talk to them on the sidelines a little bit, but in between plays Olin’s taking care of that,” Cutler said. “I’m getting the play, getting the guys in the huddle, getting everything organized.

"Those guys are professionals. On this team those guys are old enough and they’ve been around. They expect enough out of themselves that I don’t have to do a lot of yelling. I’ve heard Olin a couple times in the game getting a little bit fired up, but we’re going to take care of it in our own way.”

The Bears have not provided their offensive linemen any blocking help in the preseason like they will in the regular season because they want to evaluate their players' strengths and weaknesses.jordan shoes
“That’s a very small percentage of what we do, just having those five guys block,” Martz said. “We don’t do very much of that. You slide, you turn, you chip, you double chip; there are so many ways. There are 37 protections or more that we have to help with that. There’s nobody in that group up there that if we needed to help on a [Julius] Peppers, for instance, that we can’t go right to it and help.

"There’s all kinds of ways of doing it. We’re not hamstrung in any fashion. What we want to do [in the preseason] is put those guys out there on air against real good players and have them learn how to pass block and do it. In the event that we get a big dog over there that we’ve got to take care of, we know how to do that.”

[ThisGuyFawkes]

I certainly hope so. Our season will hinge on our O-Line and D-Line.