Brad Biggs on 2026 Bears: ‘This is a team built to win on offense’

0:00The Brand Bigs. Bigs Time. Bigs. With all in pink. Bigs Time. The Bigs Report with Brand Bigs. Bigs Time. Bigs Name is Brand Bigs. Brand Bigs Talks Football With You. Welcome back. It's on Payton Chicago Sports Radio 104 3 of the score. Good Tuesday morning. Welcome to the Chicago Sports Network audience. I'm Simon Casting. Until 9 o'clock. Thank you for watching this morning. Time now to go out to the plumbers 911 hotline. Plumbing emergency call 1-833-plumb 911. Local 130 plumbers. Get the job done right. The first time. Brad Bigs is the football man for the Chicago Tribune. The best source of Bears news anywhere. He joins us now. Morning Brad. Morning boys. What's going on? So tell us this. You were up there yesterday. The Bears return to practice. We are five days from the opener. Week one awaits Brad. 2026 has arrived. How healthy are the Bears?

1:01Well, they're certainly looking better. Deandre Swift and Kyle and Unguy both out there. For yesterday, real short practice. Mostly individual work with a little bit of special teams. But they participated. You saw Austin Booker who we know had been out recently. And he was out there. DeMarco Jackson, a linebacker who had missed some time. He was out there. So the only player that was not spotted on the roster practice squad for that matter was Roman Dunez. And potentially Ben Jansen will shed some light on his situation. A little bit later on today. Or maybe he'll take a pass. The Bears are going to practice today. Players will be off tomorrow. And then practice Thursday, Friday and advance of week one. The first injury report doesn't come out until Wednesday afternoon.

2:03So it will be an estimation for what it would have been. Had they actually practiced tomorrow. Brad, you've been at practices. You've seen some of these joint practices as well. I'm trying to figure out how much of an emphasis has been going into this camp on the offensive side of the ball for Ben Jansen to get this offense going and starting out fast in games as they head into the season. Yeah, I think they want to, I think they want to start faster. They want to, you know, they don't want to rely on these fourth quarter comebacks. And so they've got comfort level with Caleb. Like you can see that going back to the spring. You could see it in training camp. You know, the number of plays that had to re rack or just re-huttle. Everything greatly reduced. Everybody knows what's going on.

3:04So I think the comfort level being up there. I think they've got more talent across the board on offense this year. And that's not to take a swipe at anybody that was part of the action a year ago. So it's just going to have to come down execution when the game start, right? Like what's it going to require? You need to find a way to score points more in the first half of ball games, I think, to prove the start faster. So the Panthers were a playoff team last year. So they're no slouch. Bryce Jung has improved. Maybe not what they thought he would be initially, but he is ascending. You look at Tepnik Millen. He's dangerous because of his size and because his production level last year. Brad, I wonder all these things because the Bears defense enters this season still with some question marks. And one of them is at the safety opposite Dylan Thieneman.

4:05And it's odd that the Bears feel best about the safety position manned by the first round rookie. So where does that safety position? How is that lining up at Xavier Woods and Cam Lewis? And then is Xavier Woods if he starts a safety as Cam Lewis is starting Nickelback? How is a secondary shaping up overall? Yeah, that's something they're probably going to try to keep under wraps until Sunday. I think Xavier Woods ends up being a guy that gets more of the starts there. If the safety position simply based on experience, the guy's got close to 120. Maybe it's just more than that career starts in the league and Cam Lewis. He's been around for a while and was a valuable guy who could do a bunch of different things for the Buffalo bills, including on special teams. But he had 14 starts and six seasons in Buffalo.

5:07The guy with the experience here is Woods. Whether that's Xavier starting this Sunday or down the road, I guess we'll have to see. And then the Nickel spot, Lewis has got a little bit of experience. My hominous guy that they're excited about. What I'm kind of curious about is there a little bit of a timeshare early in the year? I want to look at a couple different options that they want to give these guys opportunities. So that's something to consider. Nobody's talked about that. I'm just sort of wondering aloud and you're right. I mean, Carolina for all the issues that the Panthers had last season, they were in a knockdown dragout ballgame with the Rams in the wildcard round. They led that game late and that office put up 31 points on the Rams in a really narrow, exciting ballgame.

6:09Thanks. We were talking before you joined the show about the matchup with Darnell Wright and Jalen Phillips. Are you excited? I know we're getting into game week and we're looking for matchups, but that seems to be an interesting one with both guys. Kind of with generation of wealth, as we both said. Yeah, yeah, I mean, Phillips was one of the guys who was in a position of really get paid and free agency and then Darnell. Excuse me, Cassius in here during training camp. I think Darnell writes the guys and if you're circling as the matchup for the week for the pairs or you're circling it as one of the players. And it is one of the like, Hey, here's a matchup to watch. I think the bears will feel great about that because I would imagine that the bears are going to feel like 80, 85% of the time.

7:09They're going to win that week at that position. Now, is that every play, every staff, of course, not, but if, but if you're circling these like key matchups going into a ballgame and Darnell's involved, I he that should be advantage bears. Most weeks and then I guess that goes about thing when you consider. What the clubs expect you from them based on the contract that you got back at the beginning of camp. So Brad, we were talking earlier about Dennis Allen and how this season is different from last season in that he's got a year under his belt. Maybe you expect a little bit more because the bears invested hope heavily in the coaching staff. So they didn't go out and get the expensive free agent pass rusher. They stayed away from the Jalen Phillips type signings because they said they would coach him up. Well, now it's time to coach him up.

8:10How do you view the pressure if any on Dennis Allen this year and how it compares to a year ago? I don't know that he has. I think you got to look at what the guys been given the work with and and Jalen Phillips. He'd say what say what you want about his previous production. He's going to have to be in my opinion a significantly better player than he's been previously. I think it's going to be a challenge for the Panthers to get to the through this deal with Phillips and feel like we've got our monies worth. And obviously that's the nature of free agency. A lot of the time and maybe people don't want to hear that, but when you, you know, the bears of.

9:16Signs of guys to good value contracts nothing in the quite in the neighborhood of what Phillips has gotten and I think people are disappointed in some of the results that they've gotten here. I think it's been a long time since I've been here last year and maybe the year before that with some of the defensive players. I don't know that the answer is always go out and throw even more money at the next guy and hope that he doesn't bust out. But with expectations on Dennis Allen, I mean, I look at the defense and he's got some nice parts. And I think we need to kind of reimagine how we look at the foot. This is team that's built to win on offense, right? And you need to defense and you need all three phases to have success. But they built this thing to win on offense. And so from that standpoint, I think the pressure is on the other side of the ball.

10:22And we'll have to see I've got real questions about the defensive line. You know, had tip to Contavia Street who gets kind of called out by. Dennis Allen for the strong performance he had in training camp and that's that's great for a journeyman who I think he was on a practice squad to begin last season. I don't know that that's a great thing for the Chicago Bears when this guy that's on a 15 is the player who's getting. You noted for an outstanding training camp at defensive tackle. Brad one guy that I feel like we don't talk about enough of is Tyreek Stevenson. We know we only talk we talk about Jalen Johnson and rightfully so what he means to that defense. But on the other side you got Stevenson when he's right bread. He has the ability to create turnovers. He's he's a little bit lengthy. So I love that. But when he's off, we've also seen the issues there. What Tyreek Stevenson are you should bear spans be hoping to see in week one.

11:29Well, I think what the bears fans are hoping to see with Tyreek is the same guy, you know, weekend and week out and it's possible he led that secondary and interceptions for training camp. And coaches, you've got to have that track somewhere. He was able to pick some balls off and get some deflections. I thought he had a strong training camp. And you know what? He's got all the motivation in the world is then a center in a contract here. I think when you talk about a skill set when he's right, he's a perfect fit for that. He's got height. He's got length as you alluded to. He's got the strength to play press man. So he can do all that stuff that's it's just it always goes back to kind of consistency in everything that he does. You know, you've got to you got to show up in the building. You know, ready to invest in the meeting. You got to go out to practice and be ready to invest in practice.

12:34You got to be completely prepared for the game and and when Tyreek can accomplish those things, he's going to be a valued member of that secondary. So I was Brad Biggs here on Hawn, Peyton for another couple of minutes right here on the score. Brad, we mentioned Roma Dunes a not practicing on Monday. And his status will receive a lot of scrutiny just because of his past injury history and unavailability. I just wonder heading into Sunday in week one, who would you expect to be a bigger part of the game plan in light of this? Maybe this is a big reason to buy us a dunes a or Xavier Thomas. Well, he's healthy. It's got to be a dunes a right. I mean, it's not even close because and I think that's what we got to find out here. You know, and I've seen people beat him up for being touched in the injured. He played 17 games as a rookie. Okay. He had a foot injury that he tried to play through like

13:36the last season. So it wasn't like he was running to the sideline to set out. Now I'm just going to heal up over here. So we'll see what the situation is. You know, Xavier and Thomas, they, they're intoxicated with his athletic ability, his speed, what he can do with the ball on his hands in the open field. For all the reasons that are obvious, you just get to make sure that you bring them along any noses assignments. He's like, I mean, it was like Luther. Last year, remember the snap counts for Luther early in the year. They were lower because they just wanted to make sure he was comfortable with what they were asking to do because they're putting a lot on these guys. It's not, this isn't a knock on the players at all. They're like when they talk about Caleb learning the offense, but having to drink out of the fire hose.

14:40Those other players are dealing with that too. And so you bring it along. So I would roam would be my answer unless he's simply not available on Sunday. Great stuff, Brad. Welcome to Game Week. Appreciate your time. Talk to you later this week. I'm a great day, guys. Brad begs, football man for the Chicago Tribune and big time always delivers. I always feel good after. Always. I mean, there's a lot, there's a lot there.