In a somewhat surprising move the Chicago Bears made a trade today for defensive end Gaines Adams.  The Bears traded away a 2010 second round draft pick for the promising defensive end who has 12.5 sacks over two seasons.  

Now let the speculation begin, can Marinelli be the D-Line coach to motivate Adams into achieving the level of production his talent belies?  Bucs fans are pretty ecstatic to be rid of Adams and to be getting a second round pick in return.  It's hard to judge what the Bears are thinking with this one.  A second round pick is pretty valuable, but it's not a sure thing that you'll get a player with the level of talent and athleticism Adams possesses.  This really puts pressure on Rod Marinelli even more, never mind the players that are on the defense right now. 

This likely means the end of Adewale Ogunleye's tenure in Chicago after the season.  With good reason given that O-Gun has never lived up to his lofty contract with any level of production of his own.  I've already given him a fair assessment of his production so far this season, it's been good but not as great as the 4.5 sacks would indicate.  Two of the sacks came against the Packers' back up offensive tackle who has been consistently abused by every pass rusher he has faced this season.  From Jared Allen on up it's not as if the two sacks came against a player that could be called good.  Then he goes unblocked for two more sacks against the Lions which really inflates the numbers.  While the 4.5 sacks look great on paper and get you paid lots of money, the fact is O-Gun hasn't shown much in the way of a consistent pass rush this year. 

Ogunleye is stout against the run and is good at stringing running plays out so that the LBs can come in and make the tackle.  I give him credit for his run defense, unquestionably, but the Bears need more pressure off the edge.  This would seem to be admitting that they would prefer to get more production from the defensive end position especially with Matt Ryan on tap this weekend. 

Ryan and the Falcons beat the Bears specifically because the Bears could not rush the passer.  While the pass rush is improved it is still not at the level that is needed in the Cover-2 defense.  The only way this defense  works, as has been preached time and time again is with that pass rush from the front four. 

Evidence that the Bears aren't yet satisfied with the pressure from the front four can be seen in how often they still blitz.  The Bears blitzed more than any other team in the NFL last year and have pretty consistently blitzed this year, as well as calling an audible to a blitz when it became apparent the offense was going to pass.  The raise the roof gesture you see from the linebackers is the signal to the defense to bring the blitz because the offense is passing.  This was the signal you saw from Hunter Hillenmeyer on the opening drive of the Seattle game.  The  Seahawks saw it on tape, knew how to bait the Bears into blitzing, called a screen pass and scored a touchdown as a result of knowing one of the major tendencies of this defense. 

Bob Babich or no Babich, the Bears still blitz a lot and are not effective with their blitzes.  Lance Briggs for all his greatness as a Bears linebacker is not even what I would consider an average blitzing linebacker.  I'd almost argue that Briggs is one of the worst blitzers in the league for a player of his considerable talent and production elsewhere on the field.

Evidence that the Bears need to improve on defense, look no further than third down conversion percentage.  The Bears rank 20th in the league in this category which means the pass rush for all the alleged improvement isn't producing at a high enough level to keep Lovie Smith satisfied.

This is a trade for Marinelli more than anything, Marinelli has loved Adams and wanted Adams from the get go when he was in Detroit.  Unfortunately for Marinelli they couldn't pass on Calvin Johnson to get him more help on a porous Lions pass rush.  So now it's up to Marinelli to prove all the hype that comes with his hiring even more.  A trade that is directly related to him and his coaching ability and I'm sure he put in his request for Adams.  The question now will this pay off for the Bears in helping to make the defense better and more consistent?

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