Chicago Bears @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers

The Chicago Bears head south to Tampa Bay after yielding 38 points to Jordan Love and the Packers in Week 1. 

The Buccaneers, on the other hand, enter their home opener coming off a road win at Minnesota, quickly derailing the speculation that they would be tanking for Caleb Williams this season.

Vegas isn’t expecting a shootout with a game total of 41.5, but the environment should be good enough to produce some fantasy value.

The Buccaneers were pass-heavier than expected, checking in among the top half of teams in terms of situation neutral pass rate in Week 1. 

Unsurprisingly, the Bucs routes and targets at the WR position were concentrated around Mike Evans and Chris Godwin in Week 1 and we should expect that to continue as long as both players are on the field. 

Both players are every week starters in fantasy and should be on the DFS radar this week against a Bears defense that allowed Love to throw for 9.1 yards per attempt (third best of Week 1) and three passing TDs.

Baker Mayfield proved capable of distributing the ball and should be able to support Evans and Godwin in plus matchups like this week.

Importantly, Mayfield had zero turnover worthy plays in Week 1, which is an important factor in him keeping the job over Kyle Trask going forward.

On the ground, Rachaad White turned in one of the worst performances of Week 1, finishing second to last in rush yards over expected, and dead last in rush yards over expected per attempt.

After White’s underwhelming rookie season and poor starting performance in 2023, we could see Sean Tucker steal more work as the season progresses. There is a lot of cause for concern with White and if he has another down week fantasy managers should be in full panic mode.

For Chicago, it was no surprise the Bears wanted to feature a very run-heavy attack in Week 1, finishing towards the bottom of situation neutral pass rates. However, they were ultimately forced to throw to try to mount a comeback. 

The silver lining: the Bears offense did operate at a significantly faster tempo than they did in 2022 (26.3 seconds per play in Wk 1 vs 30.3 seconds per play in 2022). But this may have simply been a function of the fact they were trailing for nearly the entire game, so I’ll be watching to see whether this trend continues or not in closer games in the future.

The most concerning aspect of Week 1 for Chicago was how ineffective the passing game was on Justin Fields’ 49 drop backs. D.J. Moore was largely eliminated from the game by Jaire Alexander and is a prime squeaky wheel play this week as the Bears will undoubtedly try to force the ball to their big offseason addition.

There is a chance the Packers defense was one of the most underrated units coming into this season, which could explain the down week for Fields.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned about Fields’ average depth of throw coming in at a paltry 3.6 yards in Week 1 while still only completing 65% of his passes.

The only other QB with an average depth of throw below 5 yards in Week 1 was Desmond Ridder (3.1 yards), but he at least managed to complete 83.3% of his passes. 

The ground game stats from Week 1 are a bit misleading as Roschon Johnson got most of his work in garbage time, but he was impressive enough that I expect for the Bears to get him involved earlier in their contests going forward.

We seem to be headed for a committee between Johnson and Khalil Herbert with D’Onta Foreman as a distant third. 

We will have to wait to see if the Bears are willing to trust the rookie as much as fantasy managers would like them to.