The Chicago Bears had high expectations going into the 2024 season, only for the offensive line to ruin it. Despite adding marquee talents like Rome Odunze, Keenan Allen, D’Andre Swift, and Caleb Williams, they failed to establish a strong foundation up front.<\/p>\n
While some blame Williams for his 68 sacks or inconsistent deep ball accuracy, there’s a bigger story to this. He endured the highest number of unblocked pressures (105) and unblocked sacks (13) in the league.<\/a> Additionally, Chicago’s interior line allowed the sixth-highest one-on-one pressure rate last season (10.1%).<\/p>\n Everyone knew the Bears had to invest in the offensive line, and they did just that. The team acquired 2021 Pro Bowler Jonah Jackson and four-time Super Bowl champion Joe Thuney via trade,<\/a> then signed highly coveted free-agent center Drew Dalman<\/a> to a three-year, $42 million contract. The big question now is will these moves drastically improve protection for Williams in 2025?<\/p>\n Joe Thuney is a future Hall of Famer. Plain and simple. Last season, he was one of just two offensive linemen to play at least 200 snaps at both guard (850) and tackle (210). At left guard, where he’s expected to start in Chicago, he allowed a mere 4.4% pressure rate,<\/a> the third-lowest among all left guards. Even at 32, Thuney remains one of the league’s best.<\/p>\n Perhaps Ryan Poles’ top free agent signing yet, words can’t describe how huge acquiring Drew Dalman was for this team. He was left one-on-one on 45.4% of pass-blocking snaps<\/a>\u2014the second-highest rate among centers (min. 200 pass blocks), and still allowed just a 4.0% pressure rate, ranking fifth in that group. Dalman also excels in the run game, posting a 93.0 outside zone blocking grade since 2022.<\/a> To put that into perspective, the only linemen ahead of him are Trent Williams (97.5), Chris Lindstrom (96.1), Frank Ragnow (94.9), and Penei Sewell (94.1)\u2014elite company for Chicago’s new center.<\/p>\n As for Jonah Jackson, his 2024 season with the Rams<\/a> wasn’t his best, but it’s just a “little hiccup along the road”<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>as he described it. Throughout his career, he has handled one-on-one matchups on 56.0% of his blocks<\/a>\u2014the third-highest rate among interior linemen from 2020-2023. The Bears hope that reuniting Jackson with Ben Johnson, who helped coach him to a Pro Bowl season in 2021, will get him back on track.<\/p>\n Actions speak louder than words, and the hope is this new-look group on the interior helps improve Williams’ development and the offense’s efficiency. Of course, any major overhaul comes with challenges\u2014injuries, chemistry issues, and unforeseen setbacks\u2014but this unit is undoubtedly an upgrade.<\/p>\n The team still has the draft<\/a> to add depth and possibly bring in competition at left tackle for Braxton Jones. Meanwhile, optimism is growing that Darnell Wright could leap into All-Pro territory<\/a> at right tackle.<\/p>\n The future in Chicago looks bright, and all eyes will be on Caleb Williams and his offensive line as they take center stage in 2025.<\/p>\n Main Image: Daniel Bartel – USA Today Sports<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With Caleb Williams facing the most unblocked pressures and sacks in 2024, how will the revamped offensive line improve his protection in 2025?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4976,"featured_media":223958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[9358,10075,7403,32729,9755,8123,3875,6185],"class_list":["post-223934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bears","tag-braxton-jones","tag-caleb-williams","tag-chicago-bears-news","tag-chicago-bears-offensive-line","tag-darnell-wright","tag-drew-dalman","tag-joe-thuney","tag-jonah-jackson"],"modified_by":"Isaac Zuniga","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4976"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223934"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223977,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223934\/revisions\/223977"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Protecting Caleb Williams: How the Bears Revamped Their Interior Offensive Line<\/h2>\n
New Additions: How Joe Thuney, Drew Dalman, and Jonah Jackson Strengthen the Line<\/h3>\n
What This Means for the Bears in 2025<\/h3>\n