For all you fantasy football players , when was the last time the Chicago Bears had a must-start each and every week regardless of the match-up?We might have to go back to the Brandon Marshall years, or maybe the mid 2000’s Bears’ defense and special teams to find a must-start. Matt Forte was good in PPR leagues, but his lack of touchdowns was an issue. Jordan Howard’s lack of receiving skills seemed to always leave him in that RB2 territory.But the 2018 Bears did have a must-start each and every week, and that was their defensive unit that was taken to another level with the addition of Khalil Mack and the consistent pressure he put on quarterbacks. A little later today , DraftKings is revealing their 2018 Fantasy Football Awards, and Windy City Gridiron has the inside scoop on one of the winners. According to the DraftKings scoring format, the Bears’ defense was the best D during the 2018 season with 187 points. Chicago’s defensive and special teams (DST) was the most drafted defense when DraftKings looked at main sets throughout the regular season. Fans chose the Bears defense 9.4 percent of the time when they set their lineups, which was far ahead of the second place Baltimore Ravens (6.6%) , and the third place Houston Texans (5.2%).Chicago’s defense also had the second best performance among all DST with their 28 point outburst against the Buffalo Bills when they racked up 28 fantasy points. They won that game 41-9, and it featured an Eddie Jackson 65 yard fumble return for a touchdown and a Leonard Floyd 19 yard interception return for TD.So how early will you guys be drafting the Bears DST for your fantasy teams in 2019? The development of quarterback Mitchell Trubisky is of paramount importance to the Bears, but that doesn’t mean they are going to stress out about every unsuccessful throw that he uncorks during practice.Trubisky said on Monday that that the offense has “been in a lot of situations this camp that we haven’t seen in the past couple years or in practices” and working through those situations has led to some errors. Quarterbacks coach Dave Ragone said that “this is the time to push the envelope” because you can work to correct anything that goes wrong and head coach Matt Nagy also espoused the belief that practice is a time for measured responses to miscues.“When you do that, you’re going to beat your head into the ground ,” Nagy said, via ESPN.com. “You can’t do that. We have big picture. There’s going to be some balls in here, there’s interceptions. I said it last year. We don’t get frustrated over that. We’re testing some things out.”Trubisky said that the offense has to “keep evolving and keep getting better” and that the “trial and error” of training camp practices is part of that process. They’ve got another month of that before any interceptions or other errors are going to be a source of frustration for all involved.
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