Thread: Brad Biggs: "Bears position analysis: Offensive line"

Originally Posted by soulman

We weren't doing to bad with that until Bush got hurt. The guy scored 5 tds from inside the 5 yard line on less than half the carries Forte had. He did pretty damn good on 3rd and one carries too. I don't remember his failing many and few he broke for some longer gains.

Where we fail on those short yardage plays more often than not is that Forter isn't a good short yardage back and he never has been which is why Emery signed Bush in the first place. Maybe Kromer will have the common sense not to keep using Forte is those situations. We can only hope.

Here's my thought on that, and I have thought about it a lot. Bush was necessary due to the fact we had no blocking (between the tackles) to support a run game. Bush did get stuffed but not as often as Forte. The problem with HAVING to go to Bush on those short yardage plays all the time, is that you are showing the defense EXACTLY what you are going to do - run Bush up the middle for the short yardage gain (I'm just talking about those short yardage runs like at the goal line and 3rd and short situations). It made sense to do this last year because we had too. And I agree, Tice failed to use Bush as often as he should have.

But with rock solid blocking (hopefully this year) we can sometimes keep Forte out there and keep the defenses guessing a bit more. And if we DO have blockers (interior blockers) who can actually, you know, BLOCK SOMEONE, then Forte can score between the tackles too. It gives the offense a powerful flexibility. You don't have to dumb down the playbook due to poor interior linemen.

I still love having Bush as a weapon. But it shouldn't be a situation where we are forced to use him to overcome OTHER players crappy play. I like having the option of using all of our weapons - because we have a rock solid offensive line.

One other point. With injuries, we may end up with other RB's playing if Forte or Bush gets injured. So, all the more reason to have an oline that can run block and make all of our RB's able to run up the middle when needed. I watched Denver do this for years (with you being from the area I'll bet you noticed it too). In the past, they'd lose an RB, and it was just "next man up" and he'd run well too. It was the blocking of the oline that allowed this. I really admired how they did this.