Will Bears' Dynamic Tight End Plan Come Together?

Loveland & Kmet Could Be Team’s Greatest Tandem, But Reality Could Kill Drive

By Clete Campbell Windy City End Zone

Colston Loveland and Cole Kmet have the potential to be the Bears' most explosive tight end tandem ever.

Mismatches. Misdirection. Massive targets.

Jokers wild in Chicago.

If the Cole Kmet and Colston Loveland tight end tandem plan can work for the Bears, the 105-year-old franchise could have a passing weapon “Papa Bear” George Halas never dreamt up.

Of course, if is always the operative word when discussing the Bears offense.

But Loveland, the Bears’ 6-foot-6, 243-pound intangibles dynamite first round pick this year, and Kmet (the author of 258 career receptions for 2,592 yards and 19 touchdowns) have been showing the promise of a true Chicago tight end double play in progress, even during the Bears’ sometimes “sloppy” offensive shows, head coach Ben Johnson says.

NFL defenses have evolved into a different stratosphere of shutdown coverage from the days when Mike Ditka reinvented the high performance and production standards of the position in the 1960s. The Bears’ 60-year problem since the Da Coach’s playing days: they haven’t greatly advanced their position performance forward despite the occasional brilliance of Emery Moorehead, Desmond Clark, Greg Olsen and Martellus Bennet.

Having seemingly a 100 starting quarterbacks and two dozen different systems have obviously offroaded the Bears’ attempts to produce a steady, productive tight end receiving attack. But Loveland and Kmet could finally end the Bears’ high impact TE drought. The duo are matchup nightmares: Agile, strong hands and a huge catch radius.

“It’s really nice to be able to go a lot of different personnels with him and Cole, both very friendly targets that I think defenses will have issues when they decide to go man, who to put the linebacker on, who to put a safety on,” Bears backup quarterback Case Keenum said Saturday. “Creates a lot of mismatches for us.”

In Johnson’s 12 personnel offense, Kmet figures to run more routes than United runs in the average day at O’Hare International.

He’s a little bit of a unicorn,” Johnson said last week “You can put him all over the place, in line to outside the numbers slot, I think you can move him around quite a bit. I think the beauty of having him outside the numbers is if you get him matched up on a safety or a linebacker even, then that’s going to be a favor for us. You know, that’s going to be a good thing. He’s going to be able to win those matchups on a consistent basis. He’s such a large target that if you put it somewhere close to him, he will find a way to come down with it.”

And all that, if the Bears’ dynamic tight end duo plays to the script, could lead to all kinds of exciting fun this fall and Jeff Joniak jubilantly announcing “Touchdown Chicago Bears” with high frequency.

“You’re always looking for those types of guys,” Johnson said. “(Denver Broncos coach) Sean Peyton has a special name, a joker is what he calls them in his offense, and guys that you can move around a lot and uses a chess piece, those are fun guys to play with.”

Plus, both Loveland and Kmet are wall stop blockers.

“It just forces a decision from a defense: Do you go big and stop the run?” general manager Ryan Poles said last week. “Or do you have to respect Loveland athleticism and route running ability to separate where you go light?”

Of course, there is a wild card in all these grand Chicago tight end plans. Will the Bears cut ties with Kmet and go all in on Loveland as a solo TE threat to save cash down the road? The sixth-year man out of Notre Dame has been the subject of heavy offseason trade rumors.

‘‘That’s the league,” Kmet, a lifelong Bears fan, told the Sun-Times. ‘‘I don’t think you should ever feel safe. If you’re not winning, you’re always going to be fighting for a job.

‘‘I love competing; I’m all about that. I can put my best foot forward, and if it doesn’t work out here, I’ll carry it on somewhere else.’’

Kmet demonstrates the historic instability of the Bears. He’s now on his third head coach and sixth play caller. He’s seen more different looks than a New York runway in fashion season.

But he’s dead set on making sure this is his last Bears coaching change, for the right reasons.

‘‘I want to see it work here and I want to see us win here,’’ Kmet said. ‘‘It means more to me here than it would any other place. That’s where I remind myself to put the ego aside. I’m not going to be a guy that’s complaining about touches or my certain role. It’s just doing what they ask of me to the best of my ability.’’

Let’s hope the Bears’ tight end Jokers play wild this fall.