The offseason featured plenty of talk about the impact wide receiver DJ Moore would have on the Bears offense after joining the team in a trade with the Panthers, but Moore can’t do much to help the team if he doesn’t have the ball in his hands and the season opener saw him playing a very limited role in the proceedings.
Bears quarterback Justin Fields targeted Moore twice during their 38-20 loss to the Packers. Moore caught both passes, but they went for just 18 yards and there was a lot more expected from the wideout heading into the year.
On Thursday, offensive coordinator Luke Getsy said that “guys like him are an important part of our plan each and every week” and that made it tough to watch the offense continually go in different directions.
“It was definitely a disappointment,” Getsy said, via NBCSportsChicago.com. “There’s a lot of reasons why things happen. Protection could have broke down for a particular play for him. Justin just maybe didn’t see something in a particular way. There’s a lot of things that go into it. I think, you know, we definitely are calling plays for DJ, and he knows that, and he wasn’t frustrated by any of that. And you know, sometimes it’s just the way the coverage dictates to where the quarterback has to go with the football too.”
The Buccaneers are next up on the Bears schedule and Moore did well in games against them when he was with the Panthers. Those Panthers teams made a lot more use of Moore than the Bears did last week, however, and it remains to be seen if Fields and Getsy can get more out of the wideout this time around.
