The Chicago Bears are just 3-3 on the season and are coming off of a Week 7 loss to the New Orleans Saints in which their normally stout defense surrendered 36 points.
While the Bears' defense has been solid this year, ranking 10th in the NFL, it has hardly been the stalwart of a unit it was in 2018, and defensive coordinator Chuck Pagano thinks it can do better:
“Certainly, the standard is the standard,” said Pagano, according to the Bears' team website. “We have played to that standard at times. I think it's just consistency. Again, you look at the first half of the last game — we played well, and we played consistent. Now we've got to do it for 60 minutes.”
Pagano is in his first year as Chicago's defensive coordinator, taking over for Vic Fangio, who took the Denver Broncos' head-coaching job.
Last year under Fangio, the Bears' defense ranked third in the league. This season, Pagano thinks that Chicago's defensive players may be putting too much pressure on themselves:
“Sometimes you can press, and you can try to, ‘Hey, I've gotta do something special,' to go make a play and get a turnover or do this and that, flip the field, whatever that is, and you can't do that,” said Pagano. “You've gotta stay steady and stick to the process and do your job, and that's it. It's no different for me or anybody else.”
Chicago won 12 games and captured the NFC North division title last year, so things have obviously been pretty disappointing for the Bears thus far in 2019.
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