Switching Positions Is No Excuse Says Lucas Patrick

Lucas Patrick has been called upon to play two offensive line positions he hadn't been brought to Chicago from Green Bay to play.

It's possible he might move to center this week finally after going from right guard to left guard, but the Bears likely will delay that announcement until Monday night's kickoff in New England.

Regardless, you won't hear Patrick blaming the different positions he's had to play for a production level he knows is far below his own expectations.

"It's a different approach but there's no excuses in this game," Patrick said. "If I'm in there playing, the guy I am going against doesn't care whether I've had 1,000 snaps, one snap, playing left, right, whatever.

"I have to perform. I'm going to work at performing at a higher level."

The website Pro Football Focus has labeled Patrick the 70th best pass blocker among 75 guards it graded, as he has not played center due to the surgically repaired thumb on his snapping hand. His blocking on runs has been much better, by PFF grades.

"I'll never speak for my teammates," Patrick said. "I can only speak for myself on my performance. Definitely not my standard.

"There are some serious things I have been working on trying to work out kinks, which side I have been playing, I am trying to get in a rhythm. I personally have to be better for this team. What I was brought in here to do and perform, I haven’t been playing to my standards point-blank.

"Just trying to work at it. I do commend this offense for how we work day-in, and day-out, week-in, week-out. There’s a ton of juice at practice and there is so much want-to. Like there is lot of things we're doing right. It's just sometimes breaks don’t come your way so we gotta keep pluggin', keep pushing and you know kind of the old adage just keep chopping wood and just keep chopping and keep chopping and eventually the stump will break."

The assessment of blocking by an analytics site is one thing but Patrick says it's clear to him he has to improve.

"It's not too tough to self-evaluate yourself because the beauty of this sport is it's black and white," Patrick said. "I either get my job done or I don't. There's not many things I think in society that it's as black and white as this sport, which I love because there's no hiding.

"It's either who you are as a person or who you're not and you have to have open and honest and real conversations with coaches. That was the beauty of all these days off. I had some real conversations with my O-line coach (Chris Morgan), sat down. I relied on some really good players we have here in Riley (Reiff) and Cody (Whitehair), went to them. Was talking to Sam (Mustipher) today about a few things. We've got some really good players here we can rely on but it's having face-to-face, man-to-man conversations about what's going on."

The solution to offensive line troubles is much like coaches said about Justin Fields. They just keep practicing.

"We have to perform in practice," Patrick said. "There's really no short, set term in this sport. It's Wednesday coming in, working hard, practicing hard."

It's not going to get easier going against Bill Belichick's defense Monday night. That can be maddening for the best offensive lines but experience helps in one regard.

"Really understanding which personnel is out there," Patrick said. "He's very good at making things seem different but they're really the same.

"It's a very complex defense and personnel usage that he has in where guys play. But you have to understand what each player might be trying to do in that defense and attack him that way. All week you need to study, but this is a week you really have to understand numbers, personnel. What is typically their base position? But they can flex a bunch of guys in different positions. It's really studying pesonnel and understanding which package is out there for defense."