If the 2023 Chicago Bears weren’t a 1-5 team with an injured starting QB, a lame-duck Head Coach, and no sense of direction in 2023, I’d be much more excited about the recent hiring of Senior Defensive Analyst Phil Snow.
The Bears have hired former defensive coordinator Phil Snow as their senior defensive analyst. He will work with advanced scouting, Matt Eberflus said.
— Chris Emma (@CEmma670) October 16, 2023
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The former Carolina Panthers DC (and former Baylor Bears DC) provides an innovative mindset to a Chicago team defense desperately needs a fresh batch of ideas. For those who don’t know, Snow made his mark on the NFL in Carolina by bringing some of college football’s cutting-edge anti-air-raid ideas into the NFL and had great success early in the 2021 season.
With players like Brian Burns fueling the pass rush and DBs like Jeremy Chinn on the back-end, a defense running Tite fronts, 3-safety looks, and other wild concepts caught offenses off-guard to start the season and led to Matt Rhule’s Panthers hitting the ground running early.
I looked for a few Twitter videos to share with you about what these defensive ideas looked like in motion, but I couldn’t find anything easily available. Therefore, if you don’t want to watch a long-form video by YouTube’s Brett Kollman, you’ll just have to take my word for it (or wait until tomorrow, where I may sneak some of his scheme into Checking The Tape).
Panthers episode is turning into a monster so I’m splitting it into two parts. Run defense episode releases Tuesday, Pass defense episode releases Thursday.
Too much goodness to break down in Phil Snow’s defense and I didn’t want to leave anything on the cutting room floor.
— Brett Kollmann (@BrettKollmann) September 25, 2021
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To be honest, the emphatic nature of Chicago’s 2023 failure has jaded me towards this particular team. I’m not sure how much I care that Phil Snow may provide the Bears their first schematic edge of the Eberflus tenure, but that’s just what Snow may do anyways.
Keep an eye out for schematic shifts within the Bears’ defense over the next few weeks — they’ll still run Matt Eberflus’ base scheme, but don’t be surprised to see a few of Snow’s ideas find their way onto the football field. When they do, they should help modernize Chicago’s pass defense (even if only a bit).
Your Turn: Does the Phil Snow hiring do anything for you?