Chicago Bears’ General Manager Ryan Poles and Assistant General Manager Ian Cunningham, both former offensive linemen, came on the job promising to fix the offensive line. While many believed that would happen quickly, their efforts to turn over the offensive line took a bit longer than initially intended.
I’m going to start you out with a chart and work backwards to explain it all. As you take your first look, I’ve charted each of the five starting offensive line positions left to right (left tackle, left guard, center, right guard, right tackle), then swing tackle (ST), swing interior offensive lineman (SiOL), and “Other.” The other spot is a summation of essentially OL8 or deeper as the roster was initially intended going into the season. Each bar indicates the percentage of snaps played by that person, who I will define below, over the course of the year. Important to note that if the intended starter at, say, left guard played snaps at center or right guard, those snaps do count for this exercise.
Wait, how can 2024 have “other” over 100%? Well, that’s because they relied on multiple players deeper than the initial seven positions to get through the season. Here’s how each season worked out.
2022: Entering 2022, Ryan Poles was looking to shed contracts inherited from the Ryan Pace era and reset this group. He drafted Braxton Jones with a 5th round pick, who played every snap at LT. He inherited Cody Whitehair and Teven Jenkins to play the guards, signed Lucas Patrick to play center, and signed Riley Reiff in the summer to play right tackle. The starting combination of Jones-Whitehair-Patrick-Jenkins-Reiff never saw the field as Patrick and Reiff started the year hurt. Patrick couldn’t snap and shared reps with Jenkins at guard until he came back in game 7 before getting hurt 10 plays into the game, giving way to Sam Mustipher, who played a remarkable 98.7% of the snaps. Mustipher is given the SiOL label here. Larry Borom projected as the swing tackle and made seven starts at RT, one at LG, one at RG, and replaced Reiff in another. The “Other” offensive linemen in 2022 are led by Michael Schofield, who made two starts at left guard and three starts at right guard.
In all, the Bears used nine different starting combinations. The most starts together as a unit shook out to Jones-Whitehair-Mustipher-Jenkins-Reiff, which is 80% of the way there, with five total starts. While this was a disaster, the five starts by Schofield are the only starts outside of the top seven offensive linemen. You could absolutely argue that Schofield was the top iOL backup as he started next to Patrick in his one start at center, filling in for Cody Whitehair. It really comes down to Lucas Patrick not being able to stay on the field.
If we grade the starting combinations by number of forecasted starting offensive linemen in the lineup, the Bears sent out all five zero times, four starters five times, three starters nine times, and two starters three times. This includes Lucas Patrick playing four games out of position. If we give a simple grade by giving credit for a start by one of the projected starters and dividing it by the total number of possible starts, that grades out to
62% for a D-. We could absolutely get harsh and dock points for other things, but let’s just keep it simple.
2023: Entering 2023, the Bears realized that Cody Whitehair might not be the guy to man a guard any longer, but wanted him to remain in the lineup at center. They signed Nate Davis to play right guard, asking Teven Jenkins to make another position change, this time flipping over to left guard. The tackles would be manned by returning veteran Braxton Jones on the left and rookie Darnell Wright on the right side. Lucas Patrick would slide into the utility interior offensive lineman role and Larry Borom hung onto the swing tackle spot.
The original intended lineup of Jones-Jenkins-Whitehair-Davis-Wright started exactly zero games together, once again. Jenkins was hurt to start the year after a preseason injury stemming from conditioning after a joint practice with the Colts (can’t make this stuff up). Whitehair slid back in his left guard spot while Patrick stepped in to man the pivot for most of the season. Borom made six starts at left tackle over the course of the year, relieving Jones in two other games. Starts by “other” players included backup guard Ja’Tyre Carter and Dan Feeney at center. All in all, the Bears managed to match 2022 with nine different starting combinations. Their highest total number of starts came from a late season stretch of Jones-Jenkins-Patrick-Davis-Wright, a fairly close approximation of what they were hoping for to begin the year, with six starts.
If we grade the year like above, they started all five starters zero times, four starters eleven times, three starters five times, and two starters once. This includes Jenkins flipping back to right guard to fill in for Nate Davis for four games and Cody Whitehair making only one start at center but ten starts overall. That grades out to a score of
72% for a C-.
2024: Lucas Patrick is gone, replaced by the new Lucas Patrick, called Ryan Bates. Cody Whitehair moved on in the off season. Nate Davis was back, kinda, as were Teven Jenkins, Braxton Jones, and Darnell Wright. Coleman Shelton was signed to give the Bears an option at center, and I am considering Shelton the swing interior offensive lineman here. Because the Bears gave up trade capital for Bates, and I believe they intended to make him the starter, it just never materialized. Larry Borom somehow made the roster and is considered the swing tackle.
The original intended lineup of Jones-Jenkins-Bates-Davis-Wright started exactly zero games together. That’s the third straight year that happened, and I just don’t know how that can possibly be explained. The Bears only used seven different starting combinations throughout the season, including a five game run with Jones-Jenkins-Shelton-Pryor-Wright. That includes four games where Jenkins couldn’t finish the game and needed Matt Pryor, Bill Murray, and Doug Kramer (!) to fill in, AND a game that Braxton Jones needed Kiran Amegadjie to finish. The Bears ended the season with the starting combination of Borom-Curhan-Shelton-Pryor-Wright for the final two games, featuring Wright as the lone original projected starter.
It’s worth mentioning that Matt Pryor played most of the year when Nate Davis decided that football just wasn’t a thing he was into anymore. That was an absolute boss signing and just want to give Matt Pryor some respect for filling in here. You could make the case that Pryor was supposed to be the swing tackle but he played most of the year at guard. You could also make the case that he was the top interior offensive line option, which he ended up being, but with Shelton starting the whole year at center, I’m counting him as the top option, fair or not. Again, this is has more to do with
Lucas Patrick Ryan Bates.
If we once again grade like above, the Bears used five starters zero times, four starters only two times, three starters six times, two starters six times, and one starter twice. That grades out to a score of
47% for a well earned F. Anyone want to talk about the league leading sack totals with three different offensive coordinators again?
2025: Ben Johnson said, enough of this, let’s get this right. After trading for Joe Thuney and Jonah Jackson, the Bears signed Drew Dalman in free agency, remaking the entire interior offensive line. Darnell Wright was the anchor at right tackle with an open competition at left tackle. Braxton Jones, working his way back from injury, won the starting job over Theo “Eggs” Benedet. Ozzy Trapilo, the second round rookie, started off the year inactive and not in the original projection. Rookie Luke Newman projected as the top interior offensive lineman.
The original intended lineup of Jones-Thuney-Dalman-Jackson-Wright made the first three starts of the season. In Week 4, Benedet started for an injured Darnell Wright and then flipped over to fill in for Braxton Jones after 28 snaps. Ozzy Trapilo took over the Benedet on the right side. Benedet made the next six starts at LT for an ineffective Jones while Trapilo played the swing. Trapilo took over the starting role in game 11 for the Bears and currently has the starting gig.
Overall, the Bears have used four different starting combinations with the progression at left tackle accounting for three of the four combinations. The interior of the offensive line has missed a combined 23 snaps, all handled by Luke Newman (3 for Thuney, 20 for Jackson).
With four games to go, the Bears have used five of their original intended starters three times and four starters ten times. It’s a score of
85% for a solid B. Now, obviously the conversation could be had about who the intended starter at LT should really have been, given the open competition and questions throughout camp. The Bears clearly would like Ozzy to take that job and run with it. Maybe at the end of the year we would want to go back and score this as Trapilo as the intended starter with him making progress as a rookie, but I do think if Braxton would have been healthy, the Bears would have loved to play him all year and let him walk for a nice comp pick. It doesn’t mean that this isn’t also a good result to get Ozzy good experience.
Conclusion
Let’s pull that graph back up again:
The dark blue bar to the on the right of each cluster is the 2025 total play percentage by each offensive lineman at that position. The 2025 mark leads the left guard (Thuney), center (Dalman), and right guard (Jackson) clusters by a lot. That’s EXACTLY what Ben Johnson and Ryan Poles were looking for when the made those moves. Darnell Wright represents the three bars over 90% in the right tackle cluster – he’s great and also exactly what Ryan Poles was looking for when he used the premium pick.
This is stability. Combine that with the improved talent at each of these positions and the Bears are set up to deliver a high level baseline to Ben Johnson’s offense for the rest of this season and into the future.
It only took four years…
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(Jan. 10, 1982)
