Montez Sweat shares first impression of Bears DC Dennis Allen
Montez Sweat shares first impression of Bears DC Dennis Allen
The Chicago Bears hired Ben Johnson as their new head coach, and he brought a well-respected coaching staff with him, including former head coach and veteran defensive coordinator Dennis Allen.
Allen will be the most important factor in getting the Bears defense back in position to become one of the league's better units, and that will also mean getting former Pro Bowl defensive end Montez Sweat back to form.
Sweat, the team's undoubted top edge rusher, struggled last season through injuries and ask underwhelming performance, but he hopes to regain form under his new defensive coordinator. Sweat recently shared his first impressions of his new defensive coordinator, who he described as "complex."
"He is a very complex individual. He has a lot of fronts and schemes and things that he can attack the offense with. He's a great guy. Smart," Sweat said, before going into more detail about why he feels Allen can be best described as complex. "Well, I'm saying that I'm trying to learn a new defense right now. So, it presents its challenges, different friends, different blitzes, different, different coverages and things like that. It's just more than I have had to learn in the past. He's definitely a little bit more complex than other DCs I have worked with in the past."
In his first nine games with the Bears, Sweat totaled 6.0 sacks after being acquired in the middle of the 2023-24 season, but had a down year last season with 5.5 sacks in 16 games played. Getting a veteran coordinator in Allen to lead the defense should help Sweat get back to being a dominant edge rusher.
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