During the first few weeks of the offseason, the Chicago Bears made it clear how they planned on fixing some of their defensive issues in the coming months.

“I just want to continue to improve our defensive speed,” Bears head coach Ben Johnson said in late February at the NFL scouting combine. “I think we saw that a little bit Green Bay and some of the games down the stretch. I want to improve our defensive speed overall. So those are some of the factors we’re going to look at.”

Chicago addressed those factors during free agency.

Speed was a top priority in the players the Bears brought in during March. Starters like safety Coby Bryant and linebacker Devin Bush brought in high-end speed that resulted in strong play. Even other free agent signings like safety Cam Lewis and defensive tackles Neville Gallimore and Kentavius Street brought in speed in backup roles.

“I think that there’s a common theme with the guys that we brought in,” Bears general manager Ryan Poles said in March. “One, we wanted to get faster and more explosive, and I think we did that. I know we did that.”

That pushed continued last weekend during the draft.

Poles used four of his seven draft picks to select defensive players who’s top quality was their speed. Safety Dillon Thieneman, cornerback Malik Muhammad, linebacker Keyshaun Elliott and defensive tackle Jordan van den Berg all had speed that showed up on their tape and in testing scores.

The priority to get faster came after a season where the Bears’ defense had mixed results throughout the year.

For many parts of last year, Chicago’s defense was the reason why the Bears won games. It put quarterback Caleb Williams and the offense in spots to complete seven comeback wins after trailing with two minutes left in the game. The unit led the NFL in takeaways and interceptions and often put the Bears in spots to win games.

But the defense had its fair share of struggles too.

Chicago allowed the sixth-most rushing yards per game (134.5) and failed to pressure opposing quarterbacks at a consistent rate. Opposing quarterbacks also carved up an injured and slower Bears secondary in the final three games of the regular season and in the postseason.

“That’s something I noticed, we all noticed, I think especially in the postseason, and really down the last part of the fall in order to play the style we want to play, we need to be able to close on the football a lot faster than we have been doing,” Poles said in March. “So that was the emphasis going into this.”

Each of the Bears’ new defensive draft picks, most of their picks in general this year, showed great speed.

Thieneman finished fourth among safeties in the 40-yard dash at the combine with a time of 4.35 seconds. Muhammad (4.42) placed fourth among cornerbacks at the combine while Elliott (4.58) and van den Berg (4.9) both would’ve finished top-10 in their respective positions had they run the 40 at the combine instead of their school’s pro day.

Speed doesn’t necessarily mean that a player will be good in the NFL. There have been plenty of Bears prospects over the years who had great speed that didn’t translate to production on the field.

But the Bears saw enough tape of the players they brought in to believe that it would translate to the field, especially with Thieneman and the safety group.

The Bears’ secondary will be more versatile and quicker with Thieneman, Bryant and slot cornerback Kyler Gordon patrolling. Poles believes that speed will take the air out of the offseason, whether it creates advantages by forcing opposing quarterbacks to hold on to the ball longer, exploiting mismatches or limiting the damage if there is a completion.

“That group can elevate,” Poles said. “Obviously there was a lot of turnovers. You can increase that number, which is going to be a big challenge for those guys. But like I said, taking the air out. Every time we’ve seen a defense and you feel like it’s suffocating because of the speed, that’s what we’re trying to do.”

The Bears are also planning on internal improvements to take advantage of the speed they added.

Despite expectations heading into the draft, Chicago didn’t select a defensive lineman until it took van den Berg in the sixth round. The Bears missed out on a run of linemen early in the second round and chose not to trade up given what the cost would’ve been too much.

“That’s something I noticed, we all noticed, I think especially in the postseason, and really down the last part of the fall in order to play the style we want to play, we need to be able to close on the football a lot faster than we have been doing. So that was the emphasis going into this.”

—  Ryan Poles, Chicago Bears general manager

But the Bears expect to improve on the line and elsewhere defensively with better coaching. Now that the coaching staff has a year of working together under its belt, Johnson was confident that his staff could get the most out of the speed and talent it added this offseason.

“We made a concerted effort on both sides of the ball there to make sure that we’re gonna get it to look more the way that we want it to look,” Johnson said. “That’s natural. I don’t think Year One, when I was a first-year play-caller, did it look the way it looked Year Two or Year Three. That’s natural, that’s how you get better. We’re always striving to improve. And I think the things that we emphasize, we’re going to see improvement at.”