If you ask me, there was a little too much hand-wringing by Chicago Bears fans when David Montgomery bolted town for a three-year, $18 million dollar contract with the rival Detroit Lions. You could hear Bill Swerski’s Superfans chiming in: “But dat guy over der is urr running baack. Da Bears need dat guy’z scores!” Hold on there, guy. Your real running back is Justin Fields.
Fields just completed a 2022 season where he rushed for 1,142 yards which was the second-most all-time by a quarterback (plus he missed two games). Add in eight rushing touchdowns, including five scores from inside the five-yard line, and all other running backs were playing for the second chair with Fields on the, um, field.
But Fields can’t do absolutely everything for this team again, and the coaches are already talking about Fields using his arm more in 2023. Opportunities will be there in this Chicago backfield in 2023, but the question is who will get the majority share. A couple of key guys have a claim on the main gig for this team that had the highest percentage of rush plays called in 2022. Will holdover Khalil Herbert or new addition D’Onta Foreman take the reins? And what do we make of the other backs on the roster?
Khalil Herbert Knows The System but Has Limitations
With David Montgomery’s absence, Khalil Herbert is undoubtedly the player who knows the Bear’s offensive system the best. After Montgomery left and Tarik Cohen was lost seemingly forever due to injury, Herbert has a massive opportunity to improve on the shot he got last year, including a couple of bell-cow games when Montgomery couldn’t play. From his rookie season in 2021 to last year, Herbert improved in yards per attempt, touchdowns, receptions per game, and snaps. He ranked top ten among all running backs in juke rate and yards per touch, according to Player Profiler.
And while you might be thinking it was a much smaller sample size for Herbert, consider what he did in his full-time roles last season. There were three games last season where Herbert saw at least 16 rush attempts in one game. In those contests, he averaged 18.3 rush attempts, 111 rushing yards, 12 receiving yards, and one touchdown per game. He had an average rush yards per attempt of around 6.0 in those games and played more than 60% of the snaps in two of them.
But what Herbert is not terrific at yet is explosiveness. He was outside the top 24 running backs in breakaway run rate and breakaway runs. His speed scores were very mediocre at the 2021 combine, so he is unlikely to break many big plays on the ground.
Considering his familiarity and success with the organization, I imagine Herbert gets the first crack at the majority workload. But the Bears bringing in a couple of free agents doesn’t give me confidence. Herbert ever exceeds more than about a 60% rushing share when all are healthy.
D’Onta Foreman Got the Bag, but Will He Get the Playing Time?
A lot of credit is due to D’Onta Foreman for the work he put in to get back to a full schedule of games last season. After missing time in every season from 2017-2021 due to major injury, Foreman made it back for 17 games and 914 rushing yards in 2022 with the Caroline Panthers. Foreman was part of a split backfield in that system but still saw more than 50% of the rushing snaps in four games. In those four games, he rushed for at least 113 yards and at least 4.2 yards per carry in each game, totaling four scores on the ground.
By doing that, he proved that he has enough gas in the tank to give a rushing-needy team some hard-pounding yards on the ground. Even though he is 27 and coming off two catastrophic injuries (Achilles and biceps tear), the Bears were impressed enough to give Foreman a $2 million deal for 2023. It’s a low-risk one-year commitment, but you don’t bring in a bruiser and proven touchdown scorer like Foreman to not use him routinely.
The one thing Foreman does not do is catch passes. He amassed nine targets last season for just 26 yards, so we can be assured he will not be on the field on third downs, two-minute drills, or other obvious passing situations. That probably limits him to no more than 50% of the rushing snaps on a game-to-game basis unless the Bears turn things around and get a large number of leads in the second half of games in 2023.
With those limitations in mind, my expectation is between a 35%-40% workload in most games for Foreman. Five of his games last season came within that window, and he was able to total 4.5 rushing yards per attempt on the season.
Who Else is Around to Mess up This Backfield?
Former Seattle Seahawks situational back Travis Homer was brought into the Bears’ running back room on a two-year $4 million contract. Normally I would say we don’t need to pay any attention to Homer after he couldn’t ever break free for more than 25 rush attempts or 20 targets in any season in Seattle, but $4 million and two years is not nothing. But in the end, I would expect Homer to be a strong special teams player and also on the field for some obvious passing downs. He likely makes the team but doesn’t make much of an impact on the ground game.
The more interesting name is fourth-round rookie Rochan Johnson out of the University of Texas. Our own Colt Snody profiled him extensively, but he is someone to watch. Johnson was the Danny Devito to Bijan Robinson’s Arnold Schwarzenegger while in college, but he still averaged 4.3 yards per rush attempt and led every college running back in missed tackles forced per attempt. There is a truly non-zero chance that Johnson is the best pure running back in this room and emerges as the favorite by the coaches over the course of the season. After just 448 touches in college, he has a lot of mileage on his tires as well.
Regardless of what happens this year, Johnson is a player to grab in dynasty leagues and someone to stash with a very late-round pick in redraft leagues.
