1:10pm: Daniels did indeed suffer a torn pec last night, as Tom Pelissero of the NFL Network tweets. He will miss the rest of the season.
10:07am: The Bears improved to 4-1 by defeating the Buccaneers last night, but they may have lost a starting offensive lineman in the process. As Mike Garafolo of the NFL Network reported after the game, Chicago fears that left guard James Daniels suffered a season-ending pectoral injury (Twitter link).
As of this morning, head coach Matt Nagy did not have an update on Daniels’ condition (Twitter link via Jeff Dickerson of ESPN.com). Daniels is scheduled to have an MRI today, so we will pass along those results as soon as we have them.
Although the Bears are near the bottom of the league in terms of total offense and points-per-game, their offensive front is actually performing pretty well as far as the advanced metrics are concerned. Football Outsiders pegs Chicago’s O-line as a top-10 unit in both run-blocking and pass protection, and any disruption to the group’s continuity will be unwelcome. For what it’s worth, Pro Football Focus thinks highly of Daniels’ personal run-blocking effort through the first few weeks of the season, though it’s less fond of his pass-blocking.
Daniels has become a fixture in the Bears’ starting lineup, having started the last 31 games for the club. He has also demonstrated some versatility, playing eight games at center in 2019 before switching back to guard.
The 2018 second-round pick is currently backed up by former UDFA Alex Bars, who has yet to record a start in his pro career.
Anyone who thinks the Bears OL is a top unit needs to see an optometrist as soon as possible.
So true lol
I haven’t a more feast or famine group in a while. But their line suffered in run blocking simply because teams were packing the box to force Trubisky to throw. Now that Foles is starting, they may have had better luck, had Daniels not gone down. Foles isn’t great, but he’ll force defenses to at least have to defend the pass as a possibility every down. The Bucs have a great front seven (especially with Vea when he was healthy), so struggled against them are expected. I’m not saying that the Bears do have a great line, but it that their line play may have looked worse because Trubisky was asking more of them than would normally be reasonable. I could be wrong, and a more detailed review of the Bears’ tape would be required to discern the truth about that. Just wondering aloud how much Trubisky’s play affected the eyeball test of the Bears’ line, of it all.
The Bears run blocking is not top 10, it’s incredibly bad, those advanced metrics have to be missing something…our longest run last night was 4 yards and the game before we rushed for 28 yards…
I think those stats are skewed because they ran well in the first three games agains subpar defenses. They were manhandled last week against the Colts and last night against the Bucs. They are most definitely average at best.
Even worse now with losing their best OL for the season
They block well in the red zone pass & run