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Good morning, Bears fans!
Fun week ahead on the Bears beat. The schedule release is set for Thursday night with a steady drip of leaks in the days before it.
Think that’ll be enough to get us through to the start of OTAs on May 27?
(“No, but we got you,” says the Illinois Senate.)
— Kevin Kaduk
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01 Rookie Minicamp
Logan Jones dons No. 54
Of course the biggest story out of rookie minicamp involved laundry. Jones is the first Bear to wear the number since Brian Urlacher and the news spurred plenty of discourse online. Did Urlacher give his blessing to the rookie center? His wife initially tweeted he hadn’t, but the Hall of Famer later posted he was happy Jones was “repping it.” I wrote over the weekend about the Bears’ inability to retire numbers and what I’d do about it.
02 Roster News
Bears sign WR Scotty Miller
The Barrington native made the most of his weekend invite, earning a deal that will place him on the 90-man roster and add a veteran presence to the back of the receivers room. Miller, 28, has played a total of 93 games for three teams over seven NFL seasons.
03 Random News
Zavion Thomas makes ‘Rookie Premiere’ class
Not sure how the NFLPA selects representatives from each team, but Thomas will get access to a lot of exposure with the league’s partners out in LA.
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Dennis Allen takes accountability
If you were to ask me the most refreshing thing about this coaching staff, I’d have to be honest and say “all the winning.”
But a close second is actually getting straight talk from the staff when things go wrong.
Ben Johnson took plenty of accountability after games last season … and then after it when the season fell short of the ultimate goal.
There’s no doubt it beats the hemming and hawing of the Matt Eberflus era and previous regimes.
Johnson isn’t alone either. Defensive coordinator Dennis Allen stepped up to the podium on Saturday and didn’t make any excuses for the lack of a pass rush in 2025.
He didn’t blame the players, the unit’s rash of injuries or anything else.
Allen instead put the focus on his performance.
“When you look at things, the first thing you have to look at is 'OK, what could I have done better?'“ Allen said to reporters at Halas Hall. “And then 'What could we as a staff have done better?' We had a lot of discussions this offseason about a lot of different things, and one of the things we identified was me.
"We focused so much on installing all the scheme last year because it was brand new, and we do have a high volume of things we carry in the defense. We focused so much on that that we lost sight of some of the fundamentals and techniques that it takes to function, to do those things.”
Two thoughts I had after watching Allen’s press conference:
Having a coordinator like Allen with previous head coaching experience can be such a positive, particularly when it gives them the confidence to be self-reflective about their shortcomings. It should also give them the ability for a quicker course correction when things go wrong.
Detractors often cite the Bears’ seven comeback wins as something that masked the team’s shortcomings and that may be true. But here’s the optimistic side of that coin: Winning 11 games in your first year as a staff can mask the fact it was still just their first year. Allen’s comments are the proof in the pudding. This year’s team will take the field with coaches who have 18 months in the building … an entire year more than last season’s team.
Of course, Allen now actually has to follow through and prove he and Johnson diagnosed the problem correctly and know how to fix it.
As he’ll also admit, it’s not a problem that can continue.
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• Allen said there hasn’t been much conversation about bringing in Cam Jordan, who he coaches in New Orleans. (Sun-Times)
• Josh Sunderbruch asks if this year’s defense is built for success. (Windy City Gridiron)
• Josh Kreutz spoke with the media after going through rookie minicamp wearing his dad’s No. 57. (Tribune)
• The article that shook up the Bears Internet on Friday: “The Bears Tax” (Sharp Football Analysis)
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