Two things are known for sure about the Chicago Bears offense in 2018: head coach Matt Nagy will be making the play calls and Mark Helfrich is the team's offensive coordinator.

Often when an offensive coordinator is hired with a head coach who is set to call plays the assumption is the new OC is little more than a placeholder given a lesser amount of duties. While Nagy has not spoken about his hiring of Helfrich, the belief is the former Oregon head coach will be very much involved in the formation of a new offensive gameplan in Chicago.

The offense for the Bears will clearly be influenced by Nagy's time under Andy Reid, meaning a big emphasis on the West Coast scheme, but the addition of Helfrich could help the duo revolutionize the way the offense is run in Chicago.

The hear "revolutionize" and offense in the same sentence when it comes to the Bears may have some fans having nightmares when thinking back to the times of Marc Trestman or Mike Martz in Chicago, but Nagy and Helfrich should inspire more confidence in fans.

Nagy is coming from a system that has long been successful in the NFL. While he has received a lot of grief for how the Kansas City Chiefs played in their lone playoff game this year, Nagy had Kansas City's offense rolling when he was given the chance to call plays for the final five games of the year. Helfrich has also received criticism for the demise of Oregon with him at the helm, but his offenses were still largely effective. His biggest issue at Oregon was his inability to properly recruit players to Eugene.

The new head coach was able to maximize the potential of former No. 1 pick Alex Smith in Kansas City by understand how to best utilize the veteran quarterback's athleticism. Nagy understood the importance of moving the pocket when needed, having Smith get rid of the football quickly and how to best utilize Smith's accuracy. Under Nagy the veteran signal-caller also became much better in terms of deep passes.

According to Pro Football Focus, no other quarterback in the NFL was better at deep passes than Smith. He attempting 62 deep passes (passes thrown 20 or more yards down the field), completing 33 of them for 1,344 yards with 12 touchdowns and just one interception.

One big reason for Smith becoming much better on deep passes was because of the team's willingness to get him outside of the pocket, where he plays comfortably, ultimately buying wideouts more time down the field to get open.

Nagy's experience with Smith should help open the door for 2017 second overall pick Mitch Trubisky to make major strides on offense.

Now, adding in Helfrich will give Trubisky a bit of a comfort factor, as well as a system that plays into his strengths. Trubisky played a spread offense at North Carolina and some of those same concepts are expected to get integrated throughout Chicago's new offensive playbook with Helfrich in place as the offensive coordinator.

The Bears will not be expected to fully implement a system similar to the one Helfrich ran at Oregon, but adding some concepts (zone-read, RPOs) from that scheme can help make Chicago's offense far more potent in 2018 than it was in 2017 under Dowell Loggains.

Back in 2015 when Helfrich was still in good standing with the folks in Eugene, Oregon, Matt Baker of the Tampa Bay Times wrote about the "7 keys to understanding Oregon Ducks offense."

Baker noted the offense was fast. It was efficient. And interestingly enough, he also labeled it as confusing.

"Oregon's connection with zone-read option runs is well known. Quarterback Marcus Mariota reads the defense, then decides whether to keep the ball or hand it off to a running back (or receiver)," he wrote.

Baker continued:

"The Ducks passing game is equally confusing for defenses. Mariota threw the ball 27 times during the first half of the Rose Bowl. All but five of those passes involved some sort of misdirection: a pump fake to a receiver, a designed quarterback rollout, a fake handoff to a teammate, or some combination of the three."

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The confusing nature of the offense is one of the reasons why the Ducks were able to have a lot of early success under Helfrich. He was able to scheme in a variety of different minor nuances, such as the misdirections, that could briefly cause the opposing defense to stumble.

He is far from an innovator when it comes to adding little wrinkles into an offense, but the way he was able to construct a gameplan, particularly when Mariota was his quarterback, should give Bears fans hope when it comes to the 2018 season and beyond.

Nagy and Helfrich are two of football's brightest young minds and have a completely blank canvas to work with in Trubisky in 2018 and beyond. There may be some minor bumps in the road along the way, but 2018 might be the start of an exciting relationship in Chicago.