Center of Attention: Dalman talks camp, Grady Jarrett and Caleb Williams

Ariana Pensy · Correspondent · 3 hours ago

CHICAGO - In center Drew Dalman’s fifth season in the NFL, he is having to gel with a new offensive line on a new team. Further, most of the players of the offensive line are new to the Bears as guards Joe Thuney and Jonah Jackson were acquired via trades this offseason.

Despite all the new faces on the offensive line and developing a relationship with a new quarterback, Dalman says things have been going well.

“It’s been good. (Quarterback) Caleb (Williams’) awesome. Great to work with him. Great to work with the other o-line guys and it’s one of the those things where everyday, something gets better and then you always have new things to patch up and fix and work on and it’s been a pleasure to work on those things,” Dalman said. “Every quarterback-center exchange is a little different. So, just learning that has been good. No issues or anything like that, but that’s always a process and then just different guys have different huddle demeanors and how they call the plays and what’s the tempo when he gets to the ball and things like that, all of which is awesome with Caleb. It’s just about us gelling and coming to have that same timing and communication with each other.”

Between the spring and the start of training camp, there have been a lot of plays that head coach Ben Johnson has installed. Nonetheless, there are a lot of plays left to install this training camp.

The only way, Dalman says to learn the offense truly is constant repetition.

“You need hundreds and thousands of reps to be able to master things,” Dalman said. “We’re doing everything we can to chunk away and we always focus on, ‘Is today better than yesterday?’ and, ‘Do we understand it a little bit more than we did the last time we ran it?’ and hoping to have everything perfect right now is going to distract us from the goal of just being a little bit better today than the last time we ran the play.”

Throughout the history of the Chicago Bears, they have been known for having strong running games. However, that was not the case last season. In fact, the Bears had one of the worst offenses last year as the entire team combined for 1,734 rushing yards.

Going into this season, improving the run game is a major priority and something Dalman maintains the Bears have been working on for multiple months.

“There’s a lot to the run game. There’s a lot of cohesion. There’s a lot of communication, all those things as well as the physical piece,” Dalman said. “But, we’ve been working on all facets of it since April 7th. (So), this feels like a step in a long process that we’ve already undergone or we’ve been undertaking.”

It is not often that two players who get released in free agency from the same team end up getting signed by the same new team. However, that is precisely what happened with Dalman and defensive lineman Grady Jarrett.

Both of them spent their entire careers with the Atlanta Falcons before being released in free agency and signed by the Bears.

Having played with Jarrett for multiple seasons, Dalman is well aware of just how talented of a player he is and how practicing against him can improve offensive line play.

“Having excellent players, of which we have many on defense, to exploit your weaknesses and teach you to overcome them is, in my opinion, one of the best teaching tools and so, having (Jarrett) and the whole defense as a resource is awesome,” Dalman said. “Any o-linemen can learn a ton from going against Grady. He’s a phenomenal player with tons of strengths and I don’t know if he has any weaknesses. So, everything can be better. Someone that’s a good pass rusher like that and a good run player is going to test your fundamentals and your technique and not let you get away with any kind of issues you have in your game. So, he definitely applies that pressure and makes us better in turn.”