A recap of Chicago Bears training camp practice number 3.
The Chicago Bears beat reporters noted the defense got on the board today with Caleb Williams registering his first interception in the 7-7 drill, picked by Jaylon Johnson, and the defense gave trouble to the offense in the red zone. But the Williams-Loveland connection was on display all day.
Dan Wiederer of The Athletic remarked, “Jaylon Johnson proof of life. Instinctive, athletic pick at the goal line in red zone 7-on-7.”
“Defense had the
upper hand in the first red zone period. Both Austin Booker and Montez Sweat with ‘sacks’ on back-to-back plays,” noted ESPN’s Courtney Cronin.
Still, it was a pretty good day for the offense and Caleb Williams on the whole. Josh Buckhalter of ClockerSports remarked that the interception to Jaylon Johnson was “Caleb Williams’ only mistake.” He also noted Tyson Bagent had a solid performance running the offense.
“It was the Caleb Williams, Colston Loveland show on Friday at Halas Hall in practice number three,” said Nicholas Moreano of Bears REKAP, “when Caleb Williams expected #84 to be in a spot, Loveland was there to make plays…Caleb Williams connected with Loveland on three of his last four passes, including a 14-yard seam route touchdown.”
The left tackle situation for the Bears seems very much in flux. Kevin Fishbain of The Athletic noted that the Bears opened team drills with Kiran Amegadjie, followed by Braxton Jones. As Adam Jahns of the Hoge & Jahns podcast remarked, “the LT competition is very, very real.” Kiran did get most of the reps with the 1s today, with Braxton Jones working with the second team and Wills with the 3s. However, while the Bears clearly have an open competition at left tackle, one shouldn’t jump to conclusions based on which player is running with the 1s in a given practice. Because the competition is open, Bears coaches clearly want to see each candidate with different linemates in practice.
So as far as the full day of practice goes, the defense made more plays today. The offense had some struggles in the red zone. But it was still a winning day for the Bears offense. As we’ve noted in these writeups before, we shouldn’t get too high or too low from shorts-and-shells practice, but I think we all prefer this kind of news to some of the worrying signs we’ve seen in early practices in past seasons.
A few other nuggets from the day.
Ben Johnson had an answer in response to Liam Coen’s comments that his players are under the radar because he sees “40 pictures of Caleb Williams” when he scrolls through his feed. (link)
“Well, we’re the No. 1 regression candidate,” Ben said, “so I think we’ve got plenty of motivation ourselves. We’ve talked about Caleb in the past. He’s used to handling a lot of attention, so I’m not worried about that.”
Running back Salvon Ahmed got substantial practice reps as Kyle Monangai missed practice for the second day in a row, and there is still no word as to why (don’t panic…yet). (link)
Ben Johnson said that the two-minute drill in end-of-half situations is a “huge emphasis” in training camp. (link)
And a few videos from the day.
