The Bears are entering scary territory in their secondary.
Injuries are piling up, and they’re searching the ends of their roster and free agents for answers. Issues like this aren’t a disaster with the season still more than a month away, but it’s an ominous sign of how precarious the plan is.
That’s a secondary, by the way, that has a lot on its shoulders already because the Bears don’t have a proven pass rush that could make cornerbacks’ jobs much easier.
The defensive star of practice Sunday was safety Xavier Woods with two interceptions and a thumping hit on tight end Colston Loveland. Woods, 31, was unsigned until Friday. Two days later he was making a case to be a Week 1 starter.
The Bears are in that situation because of thin depth across the board on defense, where talent development and acquisition have lagged behind the offense during general manager Ryan Poles’ rebuild.
At cornerback, they’ve got Jaylon Johnson, but they’re hoping for the best with Tyrique Stevenson and down to their third option at nickel as Kyler Gordon’s injury trouble continues. The Bears would love to have Terell Smith challenging Stevenson for a starting spot, as he has ever since they arrived as draft picks in 2023, but he’s hurt.
Without prized free-agent safety Coby Bryant, who is projected to be out until October, they moved Cam Lewis to his spot, but Lewis is injured, too — eliminating, for now, the Bears’ backup plan at two key positions.
Lewis, Smith and fellow defensive back Jaylon Jones were out again Sunday.
Cornerback has been a volatile position over Poles’ tenure.
He inherited a roster that had Johnson and virtually no one else who was starting-caliber, and by 2023 had flipped it to a good unit of Johnson and Stevenson, the No. 56 overall pick that year, on the outside with Gordon manning the slot.
Johnson has been outstanding aside from a major injury last season, but Stevenson has been all over the place and Gordon had three injuries last season, then got hurt again this offseason.
Those injuries, along with linebackers T.J. Edwards and D’Marco Jackson and defensive end Montez Sweat getting hurt, have left the defense in tatters. The Bears would have a brutal time missing such important pieces during the season.
For contrast, the offense has enough depth to withstand quite a few hits.
If the Bears lost three of their playmaking skill players for a stretch, for example, coach Ben Johnson would have plenty of alternatives.
Without top wide receiver Rome Odunze for the final five-regular season games, the Bears averaged 27 points down the stretch, and when running back D’Andre Swift missed the Bengals game, backup Kyle Monangai rushed for 176 yards. The offensive line, other than at left tackle, has backups who look capable of starting in a pinch.
The defense simply hasn’t been built as thoroughly, and that puts the onus on coordinator Dennis Allen to be a problem solver.
He managed admirably last season with the development of castoff Nahshon Wright into a starting cornerback when Jaylon Johnson was out of training camp and the midseason pickup of C.J. Gardner-Johnson to fill in for Gordon. Even still, the Bears’ defense was held together by a thread as it led the NFL in takeaways, but allowed the fourth-most yards and 10th-most points.
Allen said Sunday he’d rather deal with these injuries now than in the season, but, of course, that’s not how injuries work. This isn’t necessarily the only wave of them his defense will face, and the Bears would need a lot of quality players to emerge for them to survive something like this when it matters.