10 thoughts after the Chicago Bears looked ill-prepared for the beginning of the season.
They were outclassed by the Green Bay Packers in nearly every way imaginable in a 38-20 loss Sunday at Soldier Field.
1. If you had asked me what a worst-case scenario would look like for the Bears in the opener, I wouldn’t have scripted it this bad.
They were embarrassed, and it was the most inept opener I’ve covered since the Bears were pummeled 49-7 by the San Francisco 49ers at Candlestick Park in 2003. Rookie Charles Tillman had a forced fumble in that game on special teams, the first of many in his long career, and it was one of the only notable moments of the day.
The Bears probably will find some silver linings in this game — coach Matt Eberflus touted the defense holding the Packers to 2.9 yards per running play — but the reality is they got beat up front on both sides of the ball and that’s where the organization devoted a lot of resources in the offseason. Playing the run well doesn’t mean a whole lot when you allow 31 points (the Packers scored a defensive touchdown).
The Packers converted 9 of 16 third downs and got a 35-yard touchdown on a fourth-and-3 play. The Bears rebuilt the defensive front after finishing 32nd in the league on third down (49%) last season and came out and got similar results.
The pass rush was minimal. Credit Yannick Ngakoue for bringing down Packers quarterback Jordan Love for the Bears’ only sack of the game, but it was a coverage sack. Love held the ball forever on that snap. There were two other quarterback hits, one for DeMarcus Walker and one for Andrew Billings. That’s it.
A quarterback making the second start of his career was able to manage the pocket because the Bears couldn’t fluster him in a hostile road environment. It’s one thing to get carved up by Aaron Rodgers on third down; he summoned magic in nearly every encounter with the Bears, finding ways to move the chains. The Bears had Love in third-and-6 or longer on four occasions when he completed passes for gains of 30, 18, 16 and 13 yards.
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On offense, the Bears managed 122 rushing yards on 29 carries, with Justin Fields leading the way with 59 yards on nine rushes. There was the sneak he was stopped on for no gain and a quarterback draw, and it appeared the other seven runs were scrambles. Khalil Herbert, Roschon Johnson and D’Onta Foreman each had a nice run, but combined they had 19 carries for 63 yards. Not good enough.
The Packers wound up with four sacks, with Fields failing to throw the ball away when rookie Lukas Van Ness ran him down on second-and-goal from the 4-yard line. The 7-yard loss made it third-and-goal from the 11, which led to a field goal to start the second quarter that drew the Bears within 7-6.
Don’t hang that sack on the line, but the rebuilt offensive line wasn’t good enough. Yes, the Packers have invested a lot of first-round picks in their front seven, but what happened to the Bears being physical and taking the game to the opponent?
It should be an uncomfortable Monday at Halas Hall. I have no idea how Eberflus and his coaches will handle the day with the players. I’m assuming the messaging will be significantly different from what Eberflus said afterward when he talked about some of the penalties and trying to take the ball away on defense. His team got beat in the trenches.
What’s the approach from here?
Well, one is to make the film session for players brutal. That’s a quick way to find out who wants to be coached because they respect the message and who will get upset and be sensitive to criticism. Eberflus and his coaches have to do something immediately to change the tone, make corrections and shift to planning for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He can’t walk into the auditorium Monday and tell the players what they did well and try to massage the message.
It has to be real talk because if the Bears go to Tampa and lose, they could be staring at 0-3 quickly with a Week 3 trip to Kansas City to face Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs.
2. Justin Fields had a bad game, but it didn’t look a whole lot different from what was on display during training camp.
Reports of strong days for the offense and major improvements for the passing game were wishcasting at its finest.
Fields completed 24 of 37 passes for 216 yards with a 20-yard touchdown pass to Darnell Mooney and an interception that the Packers’ Quay Walker returned for a touchdown. Of the 37 attempts (the second-highest total in his 26 career starts), only four traveled 10 yards or more in the air beyond the line of scrimmage. You can’t win in the NFL like that with any sort of consistency. You have to be able to throw the ball to the second and third levels of the field — and the Bears didn’t do it.
Fields was quick to drop his eyes and look for a way out of the pocket or he threw it underneath quickly. Running backs were targeted on 16 passes, combining for 11 receptions for 80 yards. Fields had 105 passing yards when the Bears went down by 18 points with 6:26 remaining in the third quarter. On six more possessions, he added 111 yards. The Bears are so challenged when it comes to throwing the ball, they struggle to put up empty statistics in garbage time.
“I’m just not sold on him,” an NFC scout said. “He doesn’t see the field. Holds the ball. Indecisive. Hard to win consistently with a run-first guy. But he’s a very talented runner.”
I asked Packers cornerback Jaire Alexander if Fields looked like a different quarterback with a new cast of players around him on offense, including wide receiver DJ Moore.
“Hmm,” Alexander said before a five-second pause. “Yes.”
While Alexander said yes, he was emphatically shaking his head no.
It reminds me of the time Packers safety Charles Woodson said “same old Jay” after Green Bay intercepted Jay Cutler four times in a Week 2 meeting in 2012 at Lambeau Field. Same old Fields here, where he struggles in the pocket and, by and large, the Green Bay defense did a decent job of preventing him from running too much.
Walker’s pick-six didn’t turn the game by any measure. It did look an awful lot like 49ers safety Talanoa Hufanga’s interception in the opener last season at Soldier Field. In this instance, the Packers were in zone coverage and Fields was trying to hit Mooney in the middle of the field. Fields waited for Mooney to clear the window and was late with the ball.
The bigger problem was he didn’t do anything to move the backside defender, in this instance Walker. He was waiting to make a play because Fields didn’t do anything to put him in conflict. The same thing happened on the Hufanga pick last season. Eerily similar plays.
“That’s on me,” Fields said. “I’ve got to, if anything, give DJ a shot on the sideline on that. It is him or nobody. Or check the ball down to Roschon or Cole (Kmet).”
The Bears are in big trouble if Jordan Love, now with two career starts, is better than Fields. By any legitimate measurement of quarterbacks, Kirk Cousins of the Minnesota Vikings and Jared Goff of the Detroit Lions are better than those two right now. Trying to compete in a division with the fourth-best quarterback doesn’t generally end well.
It’s just one game. But in so many ways it looked like nearly every game from last season. Aaron Rodgers is gone from Green Bay and the Bears got badly outplayed at quarterback.
3. There are some questions about Matt Eberflus’ decisions and the play calling in the opening possession.
Eberflus decided to go for it on fourth down on his 40-yard line. The Bears turned the ball over on downs and the Packers went up 7-0 on the ensuing possession. I’ll get into that sequence in a little bit. That isn’t what swung this game, though. The reality is the Bears got their doors blown off in the third quarter.
The Packers realized running back Aaron Jones didn’t get enough touches in the first half (five). He carried for 9 yards on the first play of the second half. He got carries on two of the next three plays, and then the Packers appeared to fool the Bears with a throwback screen across the field to Jones that went for 51 yards. Three plays later, he scored on a 1-yard run.
The Bears went three-and-punt when they got the ball, with Justin Fields getting sacked for an 11-yard loss on first down. Defensive end Devonte Wyatt didn’t buy play action, and Fields basically peeled away from a fake and right into Wyatt’s arms.
“It was part of the game plan we had,” Wyatt explained. “Part of the play call. Me just getting upfield. He ran right into my hands. They thought I was going to fall for the run action. My job is just to get upfield. Fields fell right into me. He’s very slippery but he was so close, I knew I was going to get him.
“We definitely controlled the pocket a lot this game and got after him. So the game plan worked like we wanted it to.”
Rookie Jayden Reed hit the Bears for a 35-yard punt return, and four plays after that, coach Matt LaFleur opted to go for it on fourth-and-3 from the Bears 35. Jones was lined up in the slot to the left, matched up on linebacker T.J. Edwards, and he ran a choice route, getting open enough for an easy throw by Jordan Love. Jones attacked the Edwards’ leverage, and the linebacker lacked the speed to recover.
“On the snap, he just ran out and I was able to get inside of him and keep it high,” Jones said. “I think he’s supposed to have help on the inside, but the help kind of ran over. The plugger ran over to the opposite side and opened it up for me.”
Just like that it was 24-6, and the Bears were facing the kind of deficit they’re not prepared to rally from right now. That was the ballgame there. Credit the Packers for coming out with a goal of getting the ball to Jones. Whatever the Bears did at halftime, they didn’t come up with actionable adjustments that panned out.
4. Better days will be ahead for DJ Moore.
The Bears have to use this as a lesson because getting the wide receiver only two targets in a game in which Justin Fields attempted 37 passes isn’t going to cut it.
Moore can’t be the impact player the Bears want him to be if he’s not averaging at least eight targets a game. That’s a realistic figure, and what we saw in Week 1 was the limitations of the Bears passing game getting exposed.
“We have to figure out what we’re good at and just go from there,” Moore said.
What are the Bears good at?
“Shoot, we’re good at a lot of different things,” Moore replied. “It didn’t show today. Once we get back to the drawing board, we’ll figure it out and home in on it.”
Moore probably was frustrated and he should be. I asked him if he was surprised the ball came his way onlytwo times — he had receptions for 14 and 11 yards.
“Surprised? No,” he said. “Because the defense was kind of pushed over to me. It wasn’t a surprise.”
Said Fields: “They did crowd (Moore) up a little bit. I think his time is going to come. Just kind of how the chips fall. He’s not going to go for 100 (yards) every game. Of course, I wish he did. He’s definitely going to get more touches in the future for sure.”
Fields said the plan was to attack the Packers laterally in the passing game, relying on perimeter blocking to spring some big plays.
“We’ve just got to be better blocking on the perimeter to set those up,” Fields said. “If you go back and look at the film, if we block the guys, those are big chunk plays, 10-, 15-, 20-yard plays. That was the game plan. If they weren’t going to match, (we) decided we were going to throw it out there and let our guys work. Just didn’t do our best at perimeter blocking, blocking on the edge, for our guys to catch the ball and run.”
There was one play in which Fields threw the ball to Darnell Mooney at the line of scrimmage. Nickel cornerback Keisean Nixon came up and blew up Chase Claypool, who was in front to block, and tackled Mooney for a 4-yard loss. Nixon is 5-foot-10, 200 pounds. Claypool is 6-4, 238. Claypool, by the way, had two targets and no catches with one drop.
There’s a lot that needs to be figured out with the passing game. A lot that has to improve.
“We were more than prepared,” Moore said. “We had a week and a half. They just outwilled us today. That’s the best way I can put it.”
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5. There was a lot of focus by the Bears afterward on penalties that put the offense in some bad spots.
Left tackle Braxton Jones was called for a false start on consecutive plays in the first quarter that turned first-and-10 into first-and-20. He picked up holding penalties in the second and third quarters as well. Right tackle Darnell Wright also had a false start.
“We put ourselves behind on offense a bunch of times,” coach Matt Eberflus said. “I think that’s why the third downs (3 for 13) were not what (we) expected. We’ve got to get that cleaned up because that’s something you can improve on by being disciplined. Last year we were third in the league in penalties. We can definitely clean that up. That’s correctable.”
We can all agree on that, but the bigger issue from my vantage point is the offense really struggled on first down. Sure, the Bears got put behind the chains a few times with penalties, but they were bad on third down because they were bad on first down.
The offense ran the ball 14 times on first-and-10 and produced 42 yards. Seven of those runs went for 1 yard, no gain or a loss. That goes back to what I said at the top: The Bears got beat in the trenches. Justin Fields was 10 of 16 throwing the ball on first-and-10, not bad, but those 10 completions gained only 97 yards and there was an 11-yard sack on a first-down attempt. So 86 net yards on 17 passing plays.
Add it all up and the Bears averaged 4.13 yards on first down with the lone explosive play being a 23-yard pass to Darnell Mooney when Fields escaped the pocket to the right and made a nice throw down the sideline to a wide-open target.
I would submit the first-down struggles were more debilitating than the penalties. The Bears had seven penalties for 61 yards. The Packers were penalized nine times for 90 yards.
6. Options to help the offensive line?
My bet is Matt Eberflus wanted to instill confidence in his new offensive line — and the offense as a whole — when he made the decision to go for it on fourth-and-1 at his own 40-yard line on the opening possession.
The Bears failed on third-and-1 when tight end Cole Kmet came in motion and took the snap under center and tried to push ahead. On fourth down, the Bears called on Justin Fields to run a sneak and officials spotted him short of the line to gain.
“That was tough,” Kmet said. “The first one, I didn’t think I got it. The second one, I did think Justin got it. Tough to start the game off like that. I thought we came out, looked nice on those first few plays, and you could feel the energy in the guys and it just kind of came to a halt with those two. Not a good deal, for sure.”
Kmet ran one similar play last season under center and gained 1 yard in that instance. Isn’t it a dead giveaway what he’s going to do?
“Look, it was still an advantageous (call) for us,” Kmet said. “They were able to pinch in time before the snap. You’re a genius when it works. It’s kind of one of those things.”
I can think of a few things to mix it up with Kmet at quarterback, who was a pitcher at Notre Dame. I’m betting he can throw the football a little bit if the Bears really want to try something different. But in this instance, I don’t have any issue with consecutive sneaks. Those are high-percentage plays — or they should be. Maybe you look for something different with a backup at center in Lucas Patrick, but they should pick that up and they didn’t.
The Packers capitalized with plus field position to take the lead. The Bears righted themselves and trailed by only 4 points at halftime. It was the third quarter where things got away from them.
I like the aggressive call by Eberflus. I think he was trying to give his offense a vote of confidence. It didn’t work, but who would have been happy if he sent out the punting team when it was fourth and less than a yard?
7. The new fair catch rule on kickoffs did not come into play in the game.
The NFL has been grappling with safety concerns on the kickoff — one of the most exciting plays in the game (remember the opening kickoff of Super Bowl XLI?) — and passed a rule in the spring despite the protests of many coaches and players.
The league’s goal is to reduce the number of concussions on kickoffs and some fear the play will eventually be eliminated from the game. The new rule will spot the ball for the receiving team at the 25-yard line on any kickoff that is fielded inside the 25 by a fair catch. The league predicts this rule will result in a modest reduction in the number of kickoff returns and, in theory, slightly reduce the number of head injuries suffered on the play.
Through the first 15 games, there was one fair catch on a kickoff by Ronnie Rivers of the Los Angeles Rams, who did so on his own 4-yard line in a blowout win at Seattle.
The rule change spawned some discussion about new strategies with the possibility kicking teams will turn to squibs to eliminate the chance of fair catches. Some folks I spoke to believe that is unlikely because of the unpredictable nature of squibs, which don’t travel as far, and the possibility it sets up the receiving team with good field position.
The math shows it’s a bad idea for the Bears to consider fair catches inside the 25-yard line. The team had 38 kickoff returns last season and 26 of them were caught in the field of play. On those 26 plays, the average starting field position was the 29.5-yard line. Add on a 15-yard penalty assessed to the Philadelphia Eagles in the Week 15 game and the average starting field position was at the 30.1-yard line. The average starting field position on the 12 returns that began at the goal line or from the end zone was the 26.7-yard line.
The Bears were tackled inside the 20-yard line only once on the 26 returns fielded in play. So it raises what would appear to be a pretty simple question for Matt Eberflus and special teams coordinator Richard Hightower to answer: what would be the strategic value in ordering the return man to call for a fair catch?
Yes, there were 11 instances where the Bears returner was tackled short of the 25 last season, but seven of those were in the first seven games. Also, six were situations where the Bears started between the 22- and 24-yard line.
Against the Packers, Tyler Scott had four returns for 84 yards, with a long of 33 yards and two touchbacks. He fielded two kicks at the 1-yard line, gaining 22 yards and then the 33-yard play. He gained 18 yards on a kick he caught at the 12. There was also an 11-yard return on a ball he fielded at the goal line, the kind of negative play the Bears want to avoid.
“I’m anticipating no change,” one special teams coordinator told me, although he admitted some teams that lean heavily on analytics may try fair catching on occasion. “I certainly don’t think we’re going to see it much early in the season when the weather is warmer and the ball really travels. You will be able to tell more when the leaves start changing, it gets colder and the ball doesn’t travel as far. That’s when you will see teams’ identities. Once that happens, maybe it will be revealed, but I don’t think it’s going to have any change at all.
“If you catch it at the 10-yard line and cannot run it back to the 25, what’s wrong with your unit?”
Teams didn’t really test out the fair catch in preseason because that would eliminate live opportunities to evaluate players vying for a roster spot. As Mark Maske of the Washington Post wrote, the fair catch rule was used only once, in Week 2 of preseason by, you guessed it, the Rams. Per Maske, the average starting field position on 27 squib kicks in preseason was the 29-yard line. That’s noteworthy because the kicking team’s goal is always to pin the opponent inside the 25.
For the Bears, I circle back to the numbers from last season. Starting at the 29.5-yard line on kicks fielded in the field of play would give them nearly half a first down for the offense as opposed to executing a fair catch and beginning at the 25. Every kickoff return is an opportunity for a big play, a chance to flip the field or even score.
Special teams coaches understand the league wants to make the kickoff a safer play but they’re pessimistic this rule, which is on a one-year trial basis, will move the needle from what they consider to be a play that has already been made safer by other rule changes.
8. In regular-season mode, opportunities for the third quarterback are reduced significantly from training camp.
Tyson Bagent wasn’t getting a ton of reps anyway, not in full team drills and 7-on-7. That’s not unusual. Give credit to the undrafted rookie free agent from Shepherd, Bagent maximized his opportunities.
I was curious to learn what offensive coordinator Luke Getsy’s plan is to develop Bagent and bring him along with limited chances for work on the field. How does Bagent continue to improve? The first answer is the Bears are going to have Bagent and Nathan Peterman, who was the No. 2 quarterback for this game, split scout team reps. Sometimes, teams give the vast majority of scout team action to the backup.
“They will share every rep,” Getsy said. “We will have some developmental periods and we’ll have the scout team periods, so they’ll share that stuff for most of the season. Last year, they both did it. Trevor (Siemian) and Nate, they both did it. And whoever you think is going to be your backup for the week, they’ll take a little bit more than the other guy.”
Beyond scout team work, how can Bagent hone his craft as an unknown that showed promise in preseason?
“You have your individual periods,” Getsy said. “You have your developmental periods and then we spend time, the same thing I did in Green Bay, post-practice you basically go through the whole plan with them. So, Nate and Tyson will both get every play on air, if you will, going through everything. The same thing I did with Jordan (Love) in Green Bay.”
This is a more developed plan than you sometimes hear where the No. 3 quarterback has to learn in the meeting room and by taking mental reps on the field watching the starter. There is value but actual reps, getting chances to execute plays and then go over the gameplan even if it’s on air — without defenders — has to be helpful. The goal is to help Bagent get in a flow and understand how to assimilate information on a weekly basis while working to improve.
“Just dressing in the games and going through your weekly processes and learning how to deal — what’s my routine?” Getsy said. “How do I prepare for the game? Whenever that opportunity does come, you feel better about your process so you’re ready to go.”
We’ll see if the Bears change the order of the backup quarterbacks as the season progresses.
9. The Bears got to the opener with only two injuries from training camp lingering into the season.
Left guard Teven Jenkins (right calf) is on injured reserve and linebacker Dylan Cole (hamstring) was inactive. Cole was a limited participant in practice Friday, his first return to action in about a month, signaling he’s hopefully nearing full clearance. Center Doug Kramer is on injured reserve, but his right hand injury was suffered in the preseason finale against the Buffalo Bills, not the result of anything the team did in practice.
Circling back to Jenkins, his situation has led to a handful of questions including how was he injured? Jenkins was fine after the team’s joint practice with the Indianapolis Colts on Aug. 17. Shortly after the team returned to Halas Hall after the Aug. 19 preseason game, word filtered out he was injured and would be sidelined to begin the season. I was told healthy players that were not scheduled to play against the Colts — Matt Eberflus held out nearly all of his starters — were put through a conditioning drill prior to the game. It was then that Jenkins’ calf injury occurred. That would explain how Jenkins was fine after wrapping up practices with the Colts, didn’t play in the game and was injured before the Bears got home.
It’s pretty standard for players not participating in a preseason game to be put through various activities to get in some, so nothing stands out as odd with this approach by Eberflus.
I found GM Ryan Poles’ comments about soft-tissue injuries when he spoke Aug. 30 pretty interesting. We know that safety Jaquan Brisker (groin) and defensive end DeMarcus Walker (calf) missed a big chunk of August with soft-tissue injuries. It’s probably fair to assume a good portion of other players that had extended time on the sideline during training camp (a week or more) also had various soft-tissue injuries, as we didn’t see many guys go down with knee sprains or twisted ankles etc.
“In terms of a lot of the volume of some of the soft-tissue things that we’re dealing with, we gotta look at that,” Poles said. “Kind of do our after-action deal and see if we can kind of move the needle the other way. Our data shows us that it is going the other way. It’s less than what it was. I think some of the names were different this year, though. And we’ll continue to improve that process.”
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The Bears had a rash of soft-tissue injuries in August 2022, which isn’t out of the norm for a first-year coach who wants to push his team hard in an introductory summer. Eberflus is straightforward, saying he tells the players to get their track shoes out in preparation for training camp. If the numbers were moving in a positive direction for the Bears, that’s a good sign. Reality is soft-tissue injuries, no matter what prevention plan is in place and how practices are structured, are unavoidable. The Bears got all but Jenkins and Cole back for Week 1.
10. The Bears filled the final spot on their practice squad Thursday.
They added guard Matt Farniok, a seventh-round pick by the Dallas Cowboys out of Nebraska in 2021. Farniok started two games for Dallas last season and appeared in 19 over the last two seasons. His name was floated as a potential trade candidate in the summer but nothing materialized.
What’s noteworthy about the addition of Farniok is the team now has nine interior offensive linemen and he’s the third to arrive in the last two weeks, joining Dan Feeney (trade with Miami Dolphins) and Bill Murray (signed to practice squad).
The team is carrying five interior linemen on the 53-man roster in left guard Cody Whitehair, center Lucas Patrick, right guard Nate Davis and reserves Feeney and Ja’Tyre Carter. Teven Jenkins (right calf) and Doug Kramer (right hand) are on injured reserve. That tells me a couple things. First, the Bears view Farniok and Murray worthy of development. Second, and probably more important, the team doesn’t want to be caught in a position where another injury (or two) forces it to scramble. Jenkins’ durability issues are well documented. Patrick missed most of last season with multiple injuries and Davis was out much of training camp.
Nine seems like a high number because it is. That could change when Jenkins and/or Kramer are off IR. For now, the Bears are covering their backup plan — Feeney and Carter — with more backups.
10a. It’s hard to imagine the Senior Bowl is leaving any stone unturned early in the scouting process for the January game. The preseason watch list included a whopping 720 names — 235 more than were on the list a year ago. There is a glut of upper classmen in college football because of eligibility rules following COVID-19. It’s a good list for Illinois and Notre Dame.
Illinois (11): OL Isaiah Adams, LB Tarique Barnes, LB Seth Coleman, DB Nicario Harper, RB Reggie Love III, DL Johnny Newton, DB Tahveon Nicholson, OL Julian Pearl, DL Keith Randolph, TE Tip Reiman, WR Isaiah Williams
Northern Illinois (1): QB Rocky Lombardi
Northwestern (4): QB Ben Bryant, WR A.J. Henning, DB Garnett Hollis, LB Xander Mueller
Notre Dame (9): LB J.D. Bertrand, DB Antonio Carter II, DB Thomas Harper, DB Cam Hart, QB Sam Hartman, DL Javonte Jean-Baptiste, LB Marist Liufau, DL Nana Osafo-Mensah, DL Rylie Mills
Southern Illinois (1): DB P.J. Jules
The best prospect from these schools, from what I am told, is Notre Dame left tackle Joe Alt. He’s a true junior so isn’t on the Senior Bowl watch list. Irish right tackle Blake Fisher is another bright junior draft prospect. Per a national scout, Hart has a chance to be a Day 2 draft pick but has to be better this season. Hartman is a bit of a wild card and is off to a nice start.
Newton, Adams and Williams from Illinois are potential Day 2 picks. Newton could enhance his stock with another big season. Randolph was a late-round pick based on last season, according to one national scout who has been through campus this summer, but I am told the coaching staff believes he is significantly improved. Remember, defensive linemen come off the board early.
10b. Definitely have to monitor the health of nickel cornerback Kyler Gordon. He had his right hand wrapped after leaving with an injury in the fourth quarter. Gordon got hurt on a blitz and immediately left the game. He had a nice pass breakup on third-and-2 early in the game.
10c. This was the Bears’ 11th consecutive loss dating back to last season — and they’ve now lost their last 10 NFC North games. The Packers have won nine straight in the series and 13 of the last 14. Worse, Green Bay is 25-5 in its last 30 trips to Soldier Field, including the playoffs.
10d. The Bears terminated the contract of linebacker Dylan Cole on Saturday and as a vested veteran, he is not subject to waivers. Cole missed about a month of training camp and all of preseason with a hamstring injury. He returned to practice for the first time on Friday and was limited, but clearly not ready to play in a game.
It would not surprise me if he is re-signed to the 53-man roster. Cole collected a game check this week because he was on the roster on Tuesday. Cole’s one-year contract signed on March 23 included a base salary of $1.08 million with a $100,000 signing bonus and a Week 1 roster bonus of $52,500. It’s my belief — I’m not 100% positive — that he collected the roster bonus since he was on the roster Tuesday. By releasing Cole before the game, the team will not be on the hook for termination pay if it re-signs Cole and then decides to cut him again. Vested veterans can claim termination pay once during their career provided they are on a team’s roster through the first game of the season, meaning a team would have to pay them their entire base salary for that season. Cole was viewed as a core special teams player when the former Tennessee Titan was added and it’s possible he’s in that role soon, especially if he’s rounding into health.
10e. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers opened as a 1 1/2-point favorite for Sunday’s game against the Bears at Raymond James Stadium at Westgate SuperBook in Las Vegas.
10f. Welcome to the regular season.