After a few days of speculation over who would start at center for the Bears in Sunday's game against the Detroit Lions, Chicago officially made the switch to Cody Whitehair. The incumbent, James Daniels, remained in the starting lineup at left guard.
The Bears offense has been searching for answers during the team's four-game losing streak and with no viable shakeup possible at quarterback or any of the skill positions, the offensive line was a prime target for change.
"I thought it went well," Matt Nagy said of the position swap after Sunday's game. "We have a lot of different reasons for that. No. 1, to be clear, the offensive struggles that went on, that had been going on with us, has nothing to do with James Daniels not playing well or not performing. There's a lot of different things that we looked into with the situation, and we felt very comfortable with that."
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Whitehair has plenty of experience at center (he's started 44 games at the position since 2016) and played some of his best football as a pro in the pivot, including a Pro Bowl season in 2018. As a result, the position swap didn't take much time to prepare.
"Today again, to make a switch like that, there's two ways to look at it," Nagy said. "There's a concern of ‘Can the guys switch in a week's notice and go ahead and execute during game day?' Well, we felt good about it because of those two guys and who they are. That's an easy deal. The next part is just the execution of them doing it on game day, and they handled it well. We had a couple things here or there, but that's going to happen regardless."
It's extremely important for the Bears to settle Whitehair and Daniels into their long-term roles on the offensive line. Both players are expected to be fixtures up-front, with Daniels representing a second-round investment in the 2018 NFL Draft. He came to Chicago after a decorated career playing center at Iowa, but the transition to the speed and power of the NFL hasn't been the smoothest.
The biggest issue with Whitehair playing center is actually one of the most fundamental responsibilities of the position: snapping the ball. He isn't the most consistent with his shotgun placement and there were issues again with his snaps Sunday against the Lions.
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Nagy isn't concerned.
"We had that last year, dealing with it, but Cody has been great at just once we started discussing this move, he was really good at understanding it and just practicing it, and I think sometimes when whatever sport it is, if it's golf and a golfer has the yips or you get into -- people -- pitchers or whatever, the less you talk about it, the better it gets. So we've just tried to not talk about it."
It's only one week, but the Bears offense responded with one of their most efficient performances of the season with Whitehair manning the middle of the offensive line. Mitch Trubisky threw for 173 yards and three touchdowns while David Montgomery ran for 60 yards on 17 carries. The total offensive output still wasn't great, but the Bears built momentum in the second half that they'll look to carry into Week 11 against the Rams in what's suddenly a meaningful matchup for wild-card implications.
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