Eddie Jackson Views Yannick Ngakoue as Puzzle's Final Piece

Bears safety Eddie Jackson had gone to sleep Thursday night but was more than happy to wake up to a text from safety Jaquan Brisker.

It had a link for the announcement defensive end Yannick Ngakoue had signed with the Bears.

"It's up!" was Jackson's response.

The Bears defense, especially their secondary, is fired up over the presence of a pass rusher with a reputation for sacks off the edge.

"Oh that's a huge difference, man," Jackson said. "You know when you got that rush the quarterback ain't got the time to sit back there and pat the ball all day."

The thought is the secondary could be cherry picking more this year.

"Just to have that pressure up front, man, it helps us a lot in the back end," Jackson said. "We get to capitalize off of that as well."

It all seemed a little like the 2018 trade at the end of August for Khalil Mack, although to a much lesser extent. Mack cost the Bears two first-round draft picks and had a reputation for dominating offenses against the run and pass. Ngakoue is a pass rusher, make no mistake about it.

Jackson sees the secondary they've put together, two standout free agent linebacker additions in T.J. Edwards and Tremaine Edmunds and a defensive line now with Rasheem Green, DeMarcus Walker, Ngakoue, Justin Jones, Grevon Dexter Jr. and Andrew Billings and anticipates something better than last year's defensive collapse.

"It's just getting scarier and scarier," Jackson said. "You know, you're just adding more talent and more talent. When that starts to mesh together it's, I mean, everyone in here, has seen what's going to happen.

"When you've got a ... large group of talented players and people that's actually locked in and really love football, that's just more fuel to the fire. We feel like, 'OK we just keep taking it up a notch.' Now we've done added him. It's like, 'oh man, it's up.' Like this thing is headed in the right direction."

Jackson has talked this way in the past glowingly about the defense, only to be disappointed. He did in 2019, in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

"You know, and I hate to sound like a broken record every year saying the same thing but man, listen, like this is a different feeling right now," Jackson said. "It's like, it's, you feel the coaching shift.

"Like I said man, it's a great feeling. We're high energy, we're flying around. We're ready for this thing to head in a different direction."

Ngakoue and the pass rush have a lot of ground to make up. They were last in sacks with 20 last year. They had 10 1/2 sacks from all of their defensive linemen combined, regardless of position.

The idea of the defense this year according to coach Matt Eberflus was to get an interior rush and take up double teams there to free up their outside rushers. Now it would seem their edge rusher will get his own share of attention from blockers.

"Man, I just feel like right now it's just more up," Jackson said. "It's more energy. You know, it's just like everyone is just playing free.

"You know the year we got Mack it was like a shift, but like now it's like everyone we (are) leaning on each other. Like, 'hey bro, this is all we got. This is all we need.' Like we going to go out here and we going to ball out everyday. No one is complaining.

"We got a bunch of young guys that is like high energy, so that's kind of different from 2018. So, man, it's just, I'm excited in the direction we heading."

The defense has been playing with wild enthusiasm the last few practices, heckling the offense and screaming at offensive coaches like Tyke Tolbert and Luke Getsy.

There will be no living with them now that they have an edge rusher.

"Like I said, you can feel the culture change, feel the culture shift," Jackson said. "So we just want to take this thing in week in, week at a time, so we are ready for Week 1."