No matter what Caleb Williams’ dad says, Chicago isn’t where quarterbacks go to die.
It’s where wide receivers go to die.
That was the declaration by former Bears receiver Muhsin Muhammad in 2008.
Last season was the year it was supposed to change. Maybe this year it actually will. The Bears return wideouts DJ Moore and Rome Odunze and are replacing veteran Keenan Allen — who had by far the worst season of his career in his only year with the Bears — with second-round draft pick Luther Burden III and former Commanders receiver Olamide Zaccheaus.
Zaccheaus, who signed a one-year deal in March, averaged 29.8 receiving yards per game last season. Only four Bears during the Matt Eberflus era averaged more in a single season.
Burden was drafted at No. 39 in April — the seventh-highest spot the Bears at which have taken a receiver. He was a luxury pick after the Bears watched two running backs go in the three spots ahead of them in Round 2.
The potential is there: Burden is still only 21, Odunze 23.
“They’re keeping me young,” said Moore, 28. “Even though I’m not that old in the room. . . . I was young in some rooms. I was in the middle. And now I’m the oldest. It’s kind of weird.”
Combine the receivers with new head coach Ben Johnson, one of the NFL’s elite play-callers the last few years as the Lions’ offensive coordinator, and the Bears believe their wideouts will be better than last season. It’ll be hard to be worse. The receivers’ play was as disappointing as any aspect of the Bears’ 2024 disaster, and that’s saying something.
General manager Ryan Poles picked Odunze ninth overall in 2024, the fourth-highest the team had drafted a receiver. He traded for Allen and paid him $24 million for one season. A year ago this month, he gave Moore a four-year, $110 million extension that made him the highest-paid receiver in franchise history.
The result was a mess. Moore was mopey at times and couldn’t match his production from the previous season, when he had a career-high 1,364 receiving yards. His body language was so bad that Johnson made him focus on fixing it this offseason.
Odunze was inconsistent, in sync with rookie quarterback Williams one week but not the next. He had two or fewer catches in eight of his 17 games.
Allen struggled to adjust his next-level route-running to Williams’ rookie Rolodex and had to adjust to living outside of California for the first time since high school. His 49.6 receiving yards were a career low. He remains a free agent.
Pro Football Focus ranked the Bears’ pass-catchers fourth in the NFL before last season began. By the end of the year, they were 27th. This year, PFF projects them ninth. The Bears need them to be in the top 10 just to have a chance to keep up in the NFC North, which is also home to the Vikings’ Justin Jefferson and the Lions’ Amon-Ra St. Brown.
Improvement needs to start with Williams learning from last year’s performance. It’s a two-way street, though.
“I think [Williams] is going to play on time when the receivers present themselves that way,” Johnson said.
A new coach’s presence should help the offense. During the Eberflus era, the Bears had just one receiver with more than 1,000 yards in a season — Moore in 2023. Williams was particularly ineffective throwing deep last year, finishing with a 59.6 passer rating on balls thrown 20 yards or farther, which put him 37th in a league with 32 starting quarterbacks.
When he worked for the Dolphins a decade ago, Johnson helped quarterback Ryan Tannehill, a rookie in 2012, work on his deep passes.
“You just keep focusing on it,” Johnson said. “You get close with your receivers. It doesn’t matter if you’re throwing the ball deep, throwing it short, but it takes some time to develop chemistry, and once you get that done, then it usually becomes clockwork after that. So it’s just the more repetitions we get as a unit, the better off we’re going to be.”
This year’s passing corps doesn’t have the résumé of that last season’s did. But it has a greater upside.
“As good as we want to be,” Zaccheaus said. “It could be a thing where we all push each other to be better. And I feel like there are things that we all do very well that we can help each other with.”
During rookie minicamp, Burden made a prediction about the receivers.
“It’s gonna be a huge year for the Chicago Bears,” he said.
After last season, merely being good would be an upgrade.
