Are Bears starters playing in preseason finale vs. Titans?

The Chicago Bears are gearing up for their preseason finale against the Tennessee Titans, where one of the biggest questions outside of position battles is whether or not Chicago's starters will make another preseason appearance. The Bears and Titans participated in a joint practice on Thursday, whi

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What is the story about?

The Chicago Bears are gearing up for their preseason finale against the Tennessee Titans, where one of the biggest questions outside of position battles is whether or not Chicago's starters will make another preseason appearance.

The Bears and Titans participated in a joint practice on Thursday, which simulated a live game and provided valuable evaluation for Ben Johnson and his staff. While Chicago played its starters for one series after last week's joint practice with the Cincinnati Bengals, you have to wonder if they could see another series before the regular season.

Johnson didn't formally announce whether the starters would play in the preseason finale, but he did explain what goes into determining who plays in the preseason.

“The sports

science plays a large part of that," Johnson said. "A lot of time and energy goes into figuring out the schedule for training camp. It takes a lot of input from a number of people in the building. We've set this thing up with a big picture in mind. How do we get best prepared, not only for Week, but for the first half of the season through the bye week. When you have that in mind, you do have to make some adjustments. Guys get injured. The workload changes over the course of practice. There are some fluctuations that you can't really predict. At this point, we knew that we wanted a (preseason) Week 2 and a (preseason) Week 3 joint practice. We thought that was the best way to get our team prepared for not just Week 1, but the first four games of the season. We're executing that plan right now. We assess it every single day. (Clyde Emrich Director of High Performance) Brent Salazar is part of our staff meetings at night. He always is hitting us with the workload, who's got the heavy volume, the high speed yardage, the A-cells, D-cells. He's got all that mumbo jumbo, if you will. We try our best as coaches just to make sure we're taking care of our guys.”

Are Bears starters playing vs. Titans?

Bears head coach Ben Johnson did not officially announce whether his starters would play in Saturday night's preseason finale, including quarterback Caleb Williams. Last week, they did play for one series -- both offense and defense -- before exiting. But with this being the final preseason game, the expectation is they won't see the field. Earlier in the week, Johnson said Thursday's joint practice would determine whether starters played and/or for how long. We'll see if he saw what he needed to.