Latest On Bears’ Offensive Line
Previously a possibility at left tackle, Riley Reiff now looks to be settling in on the right side. The Bears moved the longtime NFC North left tackle-turned-Bengals RT off the blind side recently, with Courtney Cronin of ESPN.com noting rookie Braxton Jones has taken most of the left-side reps over the past several days.
Reiff, 33, played right tackle with the Bengals last season, prior to going down with a mid-December ankle injury that shelved him for the team’s unlikely Super Bowl run, and moved to the right side in 2016 to accommodate Lions first-round pick Taylor Decker. In every other season, Reiff has primarily been a left tackle.
Jones and Reiff starting would leave Chicago with two new tackle starters. The team’s top 2021 left tackle, Jason Peters, remains a free agent. The player the previous regime hoped would commandeer that post, Teven Jenkins, has not done so. The 2021 second-round pick has battled injuries throughout his career. While Jenkins has returned to practice, he has lined up with the Bears’ second- and third-string lines since doing so, Kevin Fishbain of The Athletic tweets.
As Jones began to show starter readiness during the Bears’ offseason program, Jenkins has already popped up in trade rumors. The Bears chose Jones 168th overall out of Division I-FCS Southern Utah. This would obviously be a big jump from his 2021 gig.
Larry Borom worked as Chicago’s primary right tackle last year, but the 2021 fifth-round pick is playing behind Reiff presently. Pro Football Focus graded Borom outside its top 60 tackles last season. Although O-line development usually takes some time, the Bears’ new coaching staff may be prepared to let the Mizzou product learn from the bench behind Reiff (139 career starts). Borom has been working at both tackle spots, suggesting a potential path as the team’s swing backup.
The team exited the 2020 season with one of the league’s most stable tackle tandems, with Charles Leno and Bobby Massie having started together for five years. The Bears, however, released Leno and did not re-sign Massie during the 2021 offseason. Leno is now with Washington, tied to an extension signed earlier this year, while Chicago searches for long-term replacements. The Bears are not expected to contend this season, but Justin Fields preparing for his first full campaign as the team’s starting quarterback certainly makes tackle performance important through a longer-term lens.
Additionally, late-July pickup Michael Schofield is ticketed to be the team’s top right guard, Cronin adds. Mainstay Cody Whitehair remains the Bears’ other guard starter, while ex-Packer Lucas Patrick is poised to be the Bears’ new center. A former Super Bowl starter at right tackle with the Broncos, Schofield has been a serviceable guard in the years since. The Chargers used him as a guard starter in 49 games over the past five years.
Bears OL Teven Jenkins Finishes Minicamp With Second-String Offense
Bears OL Teven Jenkins began practicing with Chicago’s second-team offense towards the end of OTAs, and that continued throughout the club’s mandatory minicamp, per Kevin Fishbain and Adam Jahns of The Athletic (subscription required). Meanwhile, Braxton Jones has been operating as the first-string left tackle, with 2021 fifth-rounder Larry Borom at RT.
Jenkins, the No. 39 overall pick of the 2021 draft, was originally viewed as a future fixture on the blindside. Unfortunately, he was forced to undergo back surgery last August, and he ultimately appeared in just six games (two starts) as a rookie.
Although both Jenkins and Borom were selected by the Bears’ prior regime, the new coaching staff appeared plenty content to move forward with them as their first-stringers — Jenkins at RT and Borom at LT — just a couple of weeks ago. So it is notable that Jenkins has been demoted in favor of Jones, a rookie Day 3 selection.
Naturally, head coach Matt Eberflus downplayed the significance of the move. “We’re going to finish off the minicamp with this alignment, and then we’ll decide, ‘Hey, we like this alignment, that alignment,’ or, like I said, ‘(We) don’t like either one; let’s go with a new one,'” he said. “So we’re just assessing guys’ talents, assessing their skill level and going forward from there.”
With three unproven options vying for jobs as OL bookends in support of a second-year quarterback, Justin Fields, there is certainly plenty of logic in trying different alignments, particularly in OTAs and minicamp. But in a separate piece, Fishbain and Jahns suggest that there is more to Jenkins’ current status than Eberflus is letting on. Jahns posits that, if the Bears simply wanted to try Borom out on the right side, they could have shifted him to the second team to give him a look while keeping Jenkins with the first-team offense at RT, where he had been penciled in for months. Indeed, OL continuity is meaningful, even in spring work, and it appears that Jenkins is simply not performing at a high enough level right now.
Obviously, the alignment for the start of training camp will be particularly telling. While Eberflus was non-committal when asked if either Borom or Jenkins could see time at guard, both players lined up exclusively at tackle in practices that were open to the media.
NFL Draft Pick Signings: 5/6/22
Here are the latest draft pick signings:
Baltimore Ravens
- RB Tyler Badie (sixth round, Missouri)
Chicago Bears
- T Braxton Jones (fifth round, Southern Utah)
- DE Dominique Robinson (fifth round, Miami University)
- RB Trestan Ebner (sixth round, Baylor)
- C Doug Kramer (sixth round, Illinois)
- T Ja’Tyre Carter (seventh round, Southern)
- DB Elijah Hicks (seventh round, California)
- P Trenton Gill (seventh round, North Carolina State)
Green Bay Packers
- LB Quay Walker (first round, Georgia)
- DT Devonte Wyatt (first round, Georgia)
- T Sean Rhyan (third round, UCLA)
- LB Kingsley Enagbare (fifth round, South Carolina)
- DB Tariq Carpenter (seventh round, Georgia Tech)
- DT Jonathan Ford (seventh round, Miami)
- WR Samori Toure (seventh round, Nebraska)
Kansas City Chiefs
- CB Trent McDuffie (first round, Washington)
- DE George Karlaftis (first round, Purdue)
- S Bryan Cook (second round, Cincinnati)
- G Darian Kinnard (fifth round, Kentucky)
- CB Jaylen Watson (seventh round, Washington State)
- RB Isiah Pacheco (seventh round, Rutgers)
- S Nazeeh Johnson (seventh round, Marshall)
Philadelphia Eagles
- DT Jordan Davis (first round, Georgia)
- LB Kyron Johnson (sixth round, Kansas)
- TE Grant Calcaterra (sixth round, SMU)
Seattle Seahawks
- DB Tariq Woolen (fifth round, Texas-San Antonio)
- LB Tyreke Smith (fifth round, Ohio State)
- WR Bo Melton (seventh round, Rutgers)
- WR Dareke Young (seventh round, Lenoir-Rhyne)
Washington Commanders
- QB Sam Howell (fifth round, North Carolina)
- TE Cole Turner (fifth round, Nevada)
- T Chris Paul (seventh round, Tulsa)
- DB Christian Holmes (seventh round, Oklahoma State)