Four things learned from the Bears, including CBs looking to bounce back

The Bears didn’t have to worry about rust coming into a new season. They were more concerned about melting.

The temperature before kickoff Sunday at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C., was 89 degrees with 48% humidity, resulting in a “feels like” temperature of 94.

After a 59-37 season-opening win that lasted 3 hours, 32 minutes on a sweltering North Carolina afternoon, Bears coach Ben Johnson was proud of how his team handled it all.

“Tough conditions, weather of course played a factor on both sides,” he told reporters during a virtual news conference Monday. “Despite a long, tough training camp, it’s hard not to allow heat like that to fatigue you to a degree, so we had to fight through that.

“I thought it was really good for us. We just want to find a way to get to the plane being 1-0, and we found a way to get that done. Week 1 in the NFL is always interesting across the league.”

Johnson had no news on the injury front but will monitor it as the Bears prepare to face the Minnesota Vikings in the home opener Sunday at Soldier Field.

“We came away in pretty good shape,” he said.

Here are four things we learned from the Bears on Monday.

1. Ben Johnson isn’t ringing the alarm yet about the secondary.

It was a rough day to say the least for a unit that contributed to Carolina Panthers quarterback Bryce Young’s 361 passing yards, the second-highest total of his career, along with three touchdown passes.

That was particularly true of the Bears’ top two outside cornerbacks.

Tyrique Stevenson took the blame for two Jalen Coker touchdowns that happened on his watch: a 51-yard bomb up the left sideline and an 8-yard score in which Coker shed Stevenson’s tackle after he took a bad angle.

“The double move, definitely we knew it was coming — I knew it was coming — so I’ve got to do a better job with my technique and making sure that I’m able to get in position to play the ball,” Stevenson said.

The 158.3 passer rating Stevenson allowed was only a hair higher than fellow corner Jaylon Johnson (156.3), who allowed the second-most passing yards (131) in the league in Week 1, trailing only Detroit Lions cornerback D.J. Reed (141), according to NFL Pro’s Next Gen Stats.

On the positive side, Johnson forced Panthers wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan to fumble in the fourth quarter.

“His punchout on No. 4, I mean, that was amazing,” defensive tackle Kentavius Street said. “He’s in man coverage, he’s guarding a crosser, which is tough.”

Ben Johnson said he talked to both cornerbacks in the locker room after the game.

“They were excited that the team won the game, but both of them felt like they could play better than they did and the tape appeared that way to me,” he said. “They both had strong training camps, so (we) really wanted to hit the ground running and I don’t think we did in terms of what we were expecting in that game.”

The coach believes both are resilient.

“They know they’re talented and this team needs them, so they’ll bounce back, no problem,” he said.

2. Rookies Dillon Thieneman and Malik Muhammad graded well.

Ben Johnson gave high marks to Thieneman, who started at strong safety, and Muhammad, who started at nickel corner.

Thieneman, the No. 25 pick in the first round, had eight tackles on defense, two more on special teams, a pass breakup and a quarterback hit in the fourth quarter that threw off the timing on Young’s deep ball to McMillan.

“Not really sure what I thought it would be, but it’s definitely a good NFL debut,” said Thieneman, who received a game ball.

Muhammad, a fourth-round selection, had a second-quarter interception that killed a late drive by the Panthers and also broke up two passes.

“Man, I felt great after that interception, I ain’t going to lie,” Muhammad said.

Johnson called Thieneman’s performance “a great start to his career.”

“He was all over the field,” Johnson said. “He’s one of those guys throughout camp that he would make mistakes but rarely makes the same mistake twice. He’s done a great job in the open field making sure he’s getting tackles.”

Johnson thought Thieneman had forced McMillan’s fumble, but the rookie wrapped the receiver’s legs, setting him up for the turnover.

“It turned out it was Jaylon (who) came in with the top-down punchout there,” he said. “(Thieneman) was all over the place.”

Johnson said Muhammad was “fearless” and sticky in coverage, and he also singled out free safety Cam Lewis.

Lewis appeared to have lost a training camp battle with Xavier Woods to replace the injured Coby Bryant, but Woods was inactive because of a groin injury.

“Kudos to Cam Lewis,” Johnson said. “He went into the day not even knowing he was going to start for us at safety. We worked out Xavier Woods that morning, and when we decided to make him inactive, Cam became our starter at safety and played really, really well. So I just wanted to throw him a shout-out.”

3. Defensive linemen were quicker out of the gates.

Bears coaches spent the summer preaching how defensive linemen needed to get off the line of scrimmage quicker and pressure the quarterback.

Fundamentals over scheme.

Take a one-week sample for what it’s worth, but their average get-off (0.83 seconds) looked a lot better than last year’s league-worst 0.92 seconds.

Still, that’s not saying much, and it translated to the seventh-lowest pressure rate (27.9%) in Week 1.

“Our get-offs were inconsistent,” said Street, who had one of the Bears’ two sacks along with Montez Sweat. “We want it to be perfect up front. We wanted everything to just go off how it did at practice, and sometimes it slowed guys down and sometimes it sped people up.

“We want to be consistently, extremely aggressive, and that’s something we didn’t do. We were maybe batting .400 and it has to be higher, like, ideally we’d like it to be .800, .900. But it just didn’t happen.”

4. ‘No block, no rock.’

Jahdae Walker received universal praise for using his body to get in the way of pursuing Panthers on Kyle Monangai’s 61-yard touchdown run.

He also had a fourth-quarter touchdown reception and delivered a monster hit on Carolina kick returner Jimmy Horn Jr.

Walker’s motivation comes from one simple mantra: No block, no rock.

Ben Johnson “just says, ‘No block, no rock,’ and that gets us going because we all want the ball,” Walker said. “So that’s pretty much all we (are) thinking about. You’ve got to buy into it or you’re going to get left.”

Johnson smiled when it was mentioned.

“I had heard that one a while ago back when I was in Miami, so I’m glad you brought that up,” he said. “That certainly showed up on the tape. We had a lot of our little guys going down and making big plays for us in the running game that ended up being some big runs for us.”