The Chicago Bears held their final practice of the week Thursday and will have the next three days off before diving into Week 1 preparations Monday. Here are three things we learned at Halas Hall.
1. Alec Ogletree is ecstatic to have an opportunity to become an impact starter for the Bears.
When training camp began, Ogletree was unemployed but still working out in case an opportunity to return to the NFL popped up. As fate would have it, he came to Chicago with his wife and son in early August to visit Robert Quinn and his family because Quinn’s wife was celebrating her birthday.
Before Ogletree could catch his return flight to Georgia, the Bears found themselves needing help at inside linebacker after Josh Woods and Joel Iyiegbuniwe were injured and Christian Jones landed on the reserve/COVID-19 list.
The Bears quickly called Ogletree — who had been at Halas Hall with Quinn days earlier for an Olympic viewing party — and told him not to go anywhere. The 29-year-old linebacker signed a one-year deal, then made a half-dozen interceptions over his first three training camp practices.
Ogletree cited a favorite quote of his Thursday — “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity” — in explaining how he rose so quickly from street free agent to Week 1 starter.
“Definitely perfect timing, I guess I would say,” Ogletree said. “Things are aligning properly for me and my family.
“I’m just trying to cherish the opportunity to be in this league because I was on the outside looking in. … And for me to be able to have a better opportunity to come back into this league and play and do what I love to do, I’ll just try to take it day by day and enjoy the moment of being here.”
Ogletree’s play throughout training camp has changed the pecking order at inside linebacker. Last year’s second starter, Danny Trevathan, is on injured reserve with knee soreness. But it seems doubtful the Bears would have placed Trevathan on IR had Ogletree not emerged in the way that he has.
For what it’s worth, Ogletree has been staying with Quinn for the first month. His Ogletree’s wife returned to Atlanta so their son could start kindergarten. But a new start is underway. And when Ogletree had confirmation Tuesday that he made the initial 53-man roster, he was excited but not satisfied.
“OK, you made it,” he said. “Now what are you going to do next to keep this job? Like I’ve said before, if you don’t produce in this league, then you can’t stick around. Yeah, you made the team. But that wasn’t the end-all, be-all for me.
2. Safety Tashaun Gipson is curious to see what the Los Angeles Rams offense will look like in the season opener Sept. 12.
The Bears lost to the Rams 24-10 in Week 7 last season. But the presumption is that coach Sean McVay will have some new wrinkles in his offense after the Rams traded Jared Goff to the Detroit Lions for Matthew Stafford last winter.
What will those wrinkles be? It’s hard to say given Stafford didn’t take a snap in preseason game action.
That leaves Gipson and the Bears defense to play a little bit of a guessing game. But Gipson saidhe considers Stafford to be a top-five quarterback in the league “on sheer arm talent alone.”
“Obviously that offense will be able to open up a little bit more,” Gipson said. “What will that look like? We don’t know. But one thing for certain is that McVay is an offensive guru, man. And I don’t think that offense will change much because what he’s doing has been working. It worked for Jared Goff. So I’m sure it’ll work for Matthew Stafford. …
“But there are things Matthew Stafford can do that not many quarterbacks can do. So I’m assuming they’ll definitely open up the offense. They’ve got a track-running team.”
3. Matt Nagy hopes his team won’t be derailed by COVID-19-related disruptions this season.
With 53 players on the active roster plus a 16-man practice squad, the Bears have not reached 100% with player vaccinations and might never hit that mark.
The team experienced a few COVID-19-related interruptions during training camp. Quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo, who is vaccinated, missed the first few days of camp practices after he fell ill with COVID-19. The Bears also put four players on the reserve/COVID-19 list in August after Eddie Goldman tested positive for the virus and Jones, Elijah Wilkinson and Patrick Scales were identified as unvaccinated high-risk close contacts. Goldman was out for 10 days. The other three players were required to miss five days.
Nagy was asked if that experience might lead him to make one more pitch to unvaccinated players to get vaccinated before the regular season begins.
“It can be a distraction. It can affect the practices,” he said. “I’m not necessarily making another pitch to them about that. I feel like we’ve done that part of it.
“We know who is (vaccinated), who isn’t. And so that’s their choice. They understand what comes with it. The rules and the protocol that we have is what we’ve got to go by. … We’ve always got to be prepared.”