Bears linebacker Leonard Floyd has 11.5 sacks in his first two NFL seasons, but that number could have be higher if he had not missed 10 games due to injuries.
It also could have been higher if Floyd had a more versatile bag of tricks to use to get past offensive linemen. Floyd showed a flash of something different in last week’s preseason opener when he got pressure on Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton by using inside moves on a couple of plays.
Outside linebackers coach Brandon Staley said that it’s been easy to see Floyd’s improvement on the hand fighting front after he spent some of the offseason doing boxing training.
“His hands have come alive,” Staley said, via the Chicago Tribune. “I think that was always, to me when I got here, the missing piece with him -- just being able to use his speed, use his length and attack these guys with his hands. I think that he still has got a long way to go, but he’s coming. You can see it.”
The Bears have plenty of questions about how they are going to apply pressure on quarterbacks this season. The wait for answers to those questions will be easier to take if Floyd is both healthy and a bigger threat as a pass rusher than he’s been the last two years.