Welcome inside the head of a Chicago Bear covering kickoffs.
There is plenty of room. There almost has to be to do the job right.
“You have to be kind of like a lunatic to be out there,” Dante Wesley said.
An aspiring model, Wesley channels his ugly inner Bear like everyone else in the huddle preparing to sprint downfield and create a collision after kicker Robbie Gould boots one into the sky.
“You have to have that kamikaze kind of approach,” Wesley said. “You have to sell out. You’re full speed for 50 or 60 yards and at the point of contact really don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Here is what usually happens this season: Either the kickoff coverage unit has given the Bears’ defense an opponent pinned deep in its own territory or it has given the NFL’s highest-scoring offense a short field with which to work.
Of Gould’s 41 returnable kickoffs this season, the longest return was 33 yards. No NFL team has forced opponents to start more drives inside the 20 than the Bears with 11. They also have popped the ball loose for three fumbles that led to 17 quick points.
The secret to the Bears gaining so much hidden yardage on kickoffs is not hard to find, even if many of the players covering kicks were.
The secret reveals itself through conversations with players like Cameron Worrell, Brendon Ayanbadejo and others who might be working in the real world if they weren’t so good at sticking their nose into the action on kickoffs.
It’s not about technique or scheme or anything that can be coached as much as coaxed. It’s about chasing down a kickoff returner like he is carrying your paycheck. It’s about finding a niche by losing yourself for 10 seconds at a time. It’s about reducing the complexities of a blocking scheme to a simple test of will.
It’s about desire.
“A guy like me, I’m 200 pounds and I’m going down and hitting offensive linemen full speed so you might have to have a little I-don’t-care-about-my-body attitude,” Cameron Worrell said. “But it’s so much fun.”
Making it the hard way
Worrell never got drafted nor did he earn a scholarship in college at Fresno State until after he walked on and started making hits that registered on the local Richter scale.
He had planned on selling home-security systems with his brother after graduating but opened eyes–and ears–with hard hitting at training camp in 2003. He was the only rookie free agent that year to earn a spot on the Bears’ 53-man roster and has kept it by covering every kickoff like it could be the last of his career.
Surrounding Worrell in the huddle before kickoffs are hungry players who beat similar odds and whose paths to the NFL are even more circuitous. They are players who pursue the football like they never forgot how uncomfortable or unlikely that trip was and never want to make it again.
“Anybody who steps out there to cover with us has to step it up because we consider ourselves the best in the league,” Worrell said. “We’re all here right now, but we all have taken different routes, paid our dues.”
Wesley walked on at Arkansas for a season before transferring to Division I-AA Arkansas Pine-Bluff because his family no longer could afford tuition and coach Houston Nutt didn’t have a scholarship to give.
Ayanbadejo played for three CFL teams and began looking into law schools before the Miami Dolphins noticed the abandon that eventually made him a Pro Bowl performer and a rich man.
Israel Idonije, an unlikely member of the coverage crew at 6 feet 6 inches and 270 pounds, preferred basketball and cricket as a youth and didn’t play football until his final year of high school in Canada. He wasn’t drafted, either, but the Bears saw something when they signed him to the practice squad in 2003.
Adrian Peterson gained 9,145 rushing yards in college at I-AA Georgia Southern but has carried the ball only 125 times over five professional seasons. Peterson realized he had to find other ways to earn an NFL paycheck, and that attitude has made him one of the Bears’ premier special-teams players the last three years.
Rod Wilson, a seventh-round pick in 2005 who mans the “R4” position on kickoffs, always imagined playing quarterback in college and chose South Carolina for that reason. He still runs more like an offensive back than a linebacker, athleticism that comes in handy.
Darrell McClover, nicknamed “Muscles” in college at Miami, found himself in NFL limbo after the Jets cut him Sept. 2 but was back covering kickoffs against the 49ers four days after the Bears signed him. The kickoff-coverage portion of the Bears’ playbook can be summed up with one word: effort.
“There was not much to learn,” McClover said. “Just be fearless.”
Know your assignment
Players do have responsibilities. Special teams coordinator Dave Toub assigns a job to each of the 10 men split into two groups of five lined up on opposite sides of the kicker. The two farthest outside positions–known as R1 and L1 in the numbering system the Bears use–must possess enough speed to chase down a return man if he breaks a long one. That’s why blazing rookies Devin Hester and Danieal Manning typically man those spots for the Bears.
Inside those respective positions are the players assigned with containing and forcing the runner into traffic. The Bears often make changes in their personnel and alignment depending on the opponent and the health of the roster, but Wesley and Worrell have filled the R2 and L2 roles lately.
“As a 2 everything is inside you and after that you can make a play,” Worrell said. “If the return goes away from you, try to run it down from the backside and if the [blocking] wedge comes to you, you can [destroy] it.”
Or at least try. That job of creating a collision with the wedge — or first wave of blockers — typically goes to bigger players in the 3 and 4 positions. As kickoff returns have developed more sophisticated blocking schemes over the years, staying in a running lane about 5 yards wide has taken on added importance for 3s and 4s. When players stray from their respective lanes, it creates a crease any good NFL returner will find.
“If the wedge comes at me, I can go through it or hold my ground and shed and make a play,” said Peterson, the Bears’ L4 who leads the team with 14 special-teams tackles and two forced fumbles.
Right behind Peterson on the stat sheet is the man right next to him in the kickoff alignment, Ayanbadejo. He and fellow 5 Idonije have a simple task, in theory.
“Everyone has a job out there, but mine is just to go to the ball,” Ayanbadejo said. “Other guys have to hold leverage, read certain keys, do certain things. I find the football.”
He usually gets there in a bad mood, an edginess that “fits my style of football,” Ayanbadejo said. Near the midway point of the season, he leads the team in special-teams points according to Toub’s rating system that rewards weekly winners with a game ball, T-shirts and other prizes.
“I think I have a comfortable lead, but I’m on five of the six special teams so I have a good chance to win every week,” Ayanbadejo said. “We take a lot of pride in it.”
It starts with Gould
Everything starts with Gould, who has kicked off an NFL-high 50 times so far. Depending on the opposing returner, Gould may aim for the left or right corner but eight times already he has nailed it deep enough for a touchback.
Last season, Gould had one touchback in 54 kickoffs. The second-year player now has eight in 50. If he were a home-run hitter, they would be checking his bat for cork. He credits improved mechanics, sounding more like a golfer than a kicker.
“I focused on a few changes with my plant foot and I don’t try to hit it 100 percent every time, just right in the sweet spot,” Gould said.
The more Gould hits the sweet spot the less the guys in his huddle have someone to hit. Occasionally, Gould will hear good-naturedly from a teammate asking him not to have such a lead foot.
“We try to tell Robbie to put it right at the goal line, give us some good hang time and we’ll tackle him at the 15 or the 10 instead of the 20,” Worrell said. “But he likes the touchbacks.”
Not as much as the Bears’ defense, the NFL’s best made even better by starting every series this season, on average, at the 25-yard line. Only twice in 50 kickoffs have Bears’ opponents started drives at the 40 or beyond.
“When we start the game with a kickoff, it sets the tone for our whole game,” linebacker Brian Urlacher said. “Our guys are unbelievable. They get turnovers and are always pinning guys down there, getting big hits.”
Every once in a while Urlacher misses doing what his status as most indispensable Bear no longer permits him to do: cover kicks. He remembers how much fun he had as a rookie in 2000 when he made four tackles covering kicks with the reckless abandon he now admires from the sideline.
“You have to love to do it,” Urlacher said. “You’re not going to find a lot of receivers on the kickoff team. It’s tough running 50 yards full speed and if you’re not running full speed you’re not going to be on there. It’s a tough play, one of the longest plays in football. It’s definitely a mentality.”
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dhaugh@tribune.com
