3 Bears players who won’t be back for the 2023 season

Riley Reiff has been fine for the Bears but the O-line needs a total overhaul

Anyone who thinks that Justin Fields is a run-first quarterback is simply telling on themselves that they haven’t watched the Bears all that much this season. Make no mistake, the Ohio State product is electric when he takes off and has no problem using that weapon to his and the offense’s advantage. However, the number of times he takes off quickly out of necessity underscores the larger problem.

The current offensive line is a disaster. Riley Reiff was brought in as a stopgap tackle option for Chicago, a role he’s been playing for the past couple of seasons around the league. Admittedly, he’s been far from the line’s biggest issue in the 2022 campaign but he’s also not been anything to write home about.

If Ryan Poles and the Bears front office have any sense about them, the primary course of action this offseason will be to upgrade the offensive line at any turn possible, perhaps as early as taking someone like Peter Skoronski out of Northwestern with a top-five pick. For the longevity of Fields and functionality of the offense, it’s a necessity.

Due to that, it would make the most sense to let Reiff be a true stopgap in that he plays the 2022 season and then they let him walk to go fill in somewhere else while they either draft a long-term option or get ready to open up the checkbook in free agency if there are quality options available to them. But what seems like a poor option is plateauing in an area of weakness by bringing Reiff back into the fold.