One amazing take on Bears offensive readiness for the season

It might be one of the more interesting—even outrageous—takes on the Bears since coach Ben Johnson walked into Halas Hall.

The Bears defense got dragged down last year by a non-starting, sputtering offense, and of this there is no doubt. A few key injuries hurt but basically the lack of support from offense pulled under their effective defense until it also sank. When you score first once in 17 games, you kind of become dead weight for your own defense.

Former Bears quarterback Jim Miller offered his comments in a discussion with team broadcasters Jeff Joniak and Tom Thayer on the Bears Weekly podcast regarding whether Ben Johnson will be the fourth-down gambler Lions coach Dan Campbell was. Miller stunned with this comment while answering yes, he would gamble.

"I think the strength of the Bears right now is their offense," Miller said.

It's OK to pick yourself up off the floor now.

If true, Caleb Williams has surely made tremendous advances since last season and the entire offensive playing level elevated through offseason work alone. This might be labeled true "fantasy football."

Their defense even controlled most offseason practices and Johnson admitted it during minicamp and OTAs.

"It's going to be, you know, a lot of it is how quickly Caleb is up to speed," Miller said. "Like I said, I think he's going to have to be ready to go. I think that the Bears offense is going to have to kind of carry the defense for a little bit."

This almost sounds like Miller is talking about the 2013 team when the offense carried the defense for the entire season.

If this is the case, then the Bears defense really must have regressed.

Football is a game of position groups, not just offense and defense. The groups function within the offense, within the defense.

Here are the five Bears position groups that should be most ready when the curtain goes up in a week. Quarterback won't be found on it when the starter is a second-year passer who is in his first days of training camp in a new offense.

From this, it's hard to see how the offense is ever carrying the defense early in the year--if at all.

They haven't had to pass block yet against a physical, charging front, and work out communication between linemen for handling blitzes. And they haven't even had their left tackle available to practice. Yet, all five players are veterans in the league and the interior trio has been highly touted for ability compared to others in the league at their position—center Drew Dalman and left guard Joe Thuney. The blocking schemes won't be that much different. While the run blocking will still take a bit of work to build them into a cohesive group.

The experience most have with all blocking types should make them quicker to be up and running than some other positions. A position battle at left tackle keeps the line from being where it needs to be, as well.

Their timing with Williams won't be there yet, and they were without rookie Luther Burden all of the full-team on-field work during the offseason, but their understanding of what's being asked of them in terms of routes should be set. It's just a matter of repetitions here.

They have a veteran standout in DJ Moore who has been through it all before. Olamide Zachheaus has been through six seasons already with three different teams and diffent types of QBs. Rome Odunze is only in his second year but is being forecasted everywhere as a player likely to break out. These players should be ready to go well before running backs, who haven't been able to practice the most crucial part of their job yet, and that's running through contact. In other years, the quarterbacks could be expected to be ready before other groups after the offense is in place. It's all still new to the signal callers, though.

The nature of their position is less reactive than it is attacking. This is not complicated and they should be ready to go after adjusting to hitting after a lack of it in the offseason. This takes a few good jolts in a practice or preseason game. All of their top five defensive ends have been through this before and they're not being asked to do anything greatly different than in the past. With Grady Jarrett and Andrew Billings at defensive tackle, the experience factor says they're ready right now. Their technique is different

The Dennis Allen scheme will allow more attacking by linebackers and this doesn't require much to be ready. Their roles, overall, might be the least changed of all the players on the defensive side beyond being able to attack more. The only difference is whether Noah Sewell fits in as the strongside with Jack Sanborn gone, but the Bears try to spend as little time in their base scheme as possible.

The emphasis will now be on more man-to-man defense and this has been a heavy zone defensive scheme since back into the 1980s.

Still, man-to-man is as simple as it gets and all the defensive backs have come up through their time in football playing that type of coverage to some degree.  The best Bears defensive player is Jaylon Johnson and he's basically played more man-to-man coverage than others over the last three years because he began getting the opposition's top receiver every week. Cornerback Tyrique Stevenson is said to be at his strongest in man-to-man coverage. All slot cornerbacks basically get locked up in man coverage often and Kyler Gordon has been no different.

Even when it's said they'll play more man-to-man coverage, they'll still be in zone half the time or more. So the change isn't as drastic. They should be up and running from Day 1.

With linebackers, DBs and defensive line among those fastst to be ready from the start, there's no way the entirely rebuilt offense is going to be asked to carry the defense.

If they do, then this already will be a long season.