Can the Bears cornerbacks be as good as they were last year?
No position group in Chicago - and few anywhere in the league - is facing longer odds in repeating their 2018 production than the Bears cornerbacks.
Kyle Fuller was a first-team All Pro and the NFL's co-interception leader. Prince Amukamara and Bryce Callahan enjoyed career years, and Sherrick McManis and Kevin Toliver answered the next-men-up bell on the league's No. 1 takeaway and pass 'D' (yards per play).
But the group returns four of its top five contributors, with Callahan replaced by free agent signee Buster Skrine and sixth-round rookie Duke Shelley, in addition to welcoming fellow rookie Stephen Denmark and first-time secondary coach Deshea Townsend, the former two-time Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steeler who intercepted 21 passes across 13 NFL seasons.
3 burning questions:
1.) Are the Bears equipped to withstand fickle trend of interceptions from one season to the next?
Over the course of his nine-year tenure, Lovie Smith's Bears were as opportunistic as any team in football but only finished in the top 5 in INT percentage in back-to-back years once.
Similarly, over the past decade, only nine NFL teams have ranked in the top five in INT percentage in consecutive seasons: the 2009-10 Packers and Eagles, the 2012-13 Bears, the 2013-14 Bills, the 2014-15 Bengals, the 2015-16 Chiefs, the 2016-17 Ravens and Chargers and the 2017-18 Bills.
What's it all mean? Maybe nothing, and in Fuller and FS Eddie Jackson, the Bears have proven takeaway artists, overseen by a new coordinator whose top area of expertise is in the secondary. Still, often with taking the football away, it's better to be lucky than good.
2.) What effect will the Callahan-Skrine swap have on the unit?
Skrine hasn't gotten his hands on balls as consistently as Callahan throughout his career. He's also gotten caught with his hands illegally on his man far more frequently but has played a lot more ball because (A) he's been in the league four more years and (B) he's been a lot more durable.
It's possible the tale of the 2018 Bears would've been far different if Callahan, not his injury replacement, McManis, were covering Golden Tate on the game-winning TD catch in the wild-card round defeat to the Eagles. Of course, it's also possible Skrine would've been beaten, or flagged, moving the Eagles closer to a TD plunge and taking more time off the clock that Mitch Trubisky used to acquit himself individually on the game's final drive.
The point - and one of the primary reasons Skrine and not Callahan is in Chicago - is that the Bears don't want to be in a position where they're left wondering next time. Before missing five combined games over his past three seasons, Skrine appeared in 87 games consecutively, when he built his track record of availability and feistiness.
The Bears expect that the best from Skrine, 30, still lies ahead, partially because he's never been surrounded by a better group of defensive backs. There's some projecting involved, but not nearly as much as there is with Shelley, a standout in his first offseason but learning nickel after almost exclusively playing on the boundaries at Kansas State.
3.) Does this group include a potential hidden gem?
In Callahan and fellow ex-Bear Cre'Von LeBlanc, GM Ryan Pace unearthed two undrafted diamonds in the rough, and there's optimism internally that Toliver could be next entering his second season.
The LSU product logged sporadic snaps this offseason with the starters and has prototype size and athleticism to become the first outside corner off the bench after Fuller and Amukamara.
It'll be interesting to see how Denmark might fit in the puzzle because he'll be competing against the more experienced Toliver, whom the Bears might have a more difficult time stashing on the practice squad, and also Sherrick McManis, the team's longest-tenured player and a special teams stalwart who cross trained at safety in the spring.
Shelley is a fascinating long-term sleeper candidate to usurp Skrine, but how steep his learning curve is at a new position will be an important camp story to monitor because McManis is the only vet with nickel experience and tends to get exploited the longer he's asked to play on defense.
The CB corps will be among the NFL's best if …
Fuller carries over his dynamite form of the past two seasons and Amukamara and Skrine can be steady, maximize their chances and hold up physically in their first age-30 campaigns.
The wheels will fall off if …
Toliver and Shelley are pressed into action before they're ready.
• Arthur Arkush is the managing editor for Pro Football Weekly. For more on the NFL, visit profootballweekly.com and follow Arthur on Twitter