Chicago Bears wide receiver Chase Claypool has hinted that fans should be feeling really excited ahead of the upcoming season.
The Chicago Bears are certainly an odd team to figure out after this past season. For starters, they had the worst record in the entire league, but at the same time, eight of those losses were by one score or less, so they have a lot of potential in there is they could just correct a few mistakes.
Speaking of potential, the upcoming NFL Draft currently sees them at the #1 spot after their 3-14 return last year, but with reports that they are ‘leaning towards’ trading the #1 pick, it opens up all kinds of possibilities for what they’ll do. Will they move down just a few spots? How much will they get back in return? Will they end up keeping it? What sort of player will they take and what impact will that have?
On the subject of players, the most important one on the field is the quarterback, and after this past season, Justin Fields looks as if he’s on the right track to be a good one in this league, with his numbers in pass completion rate, interception rate, quarterback rating and rushing yards all moving in the right direction in 2022 (via ProFootballReference).
And lastly there is cap space, which the Bears have got plenty of, which will allow them to be very aggressive when it comes to attacking free agents during this upcoming offseason. Which leaves wide receiver Chase Claypool thinking that this is just the start of something special with this side.
Chicago Bears bearing down on a successful formula?
Claypool is a player who is someone who is relatively new to the Bears way of life, as he only joined the team this past season in a trade from the Pittsburgh Steelers, and certainly started slow with his new side, with only 14 receptions for 140 yards and 0 touchdowns last year (via ProFootballReference).
And speaking during a Q&A session following the launch of the new NFL Girls Flag Football League, Claypool was eager to tell fans just how excited they should be ahead of the 2023 campaign:
Super excited. Last season might not have won our way wins and loss-wise, but I think if you look at the games and how close we were and how winnable a lot of those games you start to understand that we could have been a 10/11 win team, and we’re young, so that’s OK. So we’re going to grow, we’re going to utilise our cap space, we’re going utilise the youth on our team, and it’s going to be really exciting.
Should the Chicago Bears be preparing their Super Bowl souffle just yet?
The answer to that is a hard no. Whilst there is certainly a lot that Bears fans should be hopeful for, this is going to take some time before they can be considered as real contenders for the Vince Lombardi Trophy. It’s very rare that a team can make that big a jump in that short a space of time, but in the long run, they might be onto something.
It might take Fields a few more years to get his completion rate up to a healthy 65%, or for them to develop a talented group of wide receivers for him to work with, or an offensive line that can protect him. All of these things will be hard to solve overnight, even with the picks and cap space that they’ll have this offseason as you can really only truly fix one thing at a time.
So in a few years? Yes. But this season? No chance.
Travis Burnett
A pioneer in the flag football community, Travis helped co-found the Flag Football World Championship Tour, FlagSpin and USA Flag. Featuring 15+ years of content creation for the sport of flag football, creating and managing the largest flag football tournaments on the planet, coaching experience at the youth and adult level as well as an active player with National and World Championship level experience.
