Bear Digest

Chicago Bears Rookie Progress Tracker

From Tory Taylor and Austin Booker to Caleb Williams, here is a progress report on the Bears rookie class as they rest up until reporting July 16 for the early rookie start to training camp.

Gene Chamberlain

Rookie Bears punter Tory Taylor takes a stride before putting his foot into a punt during offseason work at Halas Hall.
Rookie Bears punter Tory Taylor takes a stride before putting his foot into a punt during offseason work at Halas Hall. / David Banks-USA TODAY Sports
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Bears rookies get to enjoy an early July 16 reporting date to training camp.

They've come a long way since the end of April and the extra days will let them recoup anything they lost over the previous 4 1/2 weeks without practices before veterans come around and expose them for their lack of experience.

When they left off, coach Matt Eberflus' words were to continue studying their roles within the offense or defense because the level of intensity and play only picks up.

"My point to the rookies was simple: Where we're at right now is a place where we can't be," Eberflus said. "We gotta be at a level up, we gotta level up two spots in those four weeks in the preparation. Being able to say the call, see it in your mind and then go and execute it."

Eberflus warned the rookies paying lip service to studying this summer wasn't going to get it done.

"Everybody says they want to be a winner and no one wants to be a loser, well, you gotta put the time in to be a winner," he said.

When they left off, the small rookie class appeared to have made progress. Here's who and how much.

5th Round

DE Austin Booker

When Booker beat veteran on a couple of pass rushes in full-squad work during minicamp, it failed to surprise coaches. They had been talking about his rangy look and long legs since draft day, and the former Kansas and Minnesota edge rusher didn't need pads on to display this.

"I don't know if there's something I'm seeing now that I didn't see on tape, but I think the good thing is that the things that we saw on tape that were things we were attracted to we are seeing now on field," defensive line coach Travis Smith said. "The unorthodox movement. Some of the difficulty to block him with his ability to slip and side and get on an edge and beat with an inside move. You're seeing some of things that you saw him do in college at Kansas.

"You're seeing that in practice now. He does have a high motor. He does play with good effort."

Player and coaches kept Booker aware of the down-and-distance situations during full-squad scrimmage work just to keep his mind on game situations. Sometimes players can lose track of the forest for the trees during offseason work.

They moved him around on the outside, had him at the 5-technique role and flipping sides on occasion, but he mostly practiced with backups.

Realistic Scenario: After starting out with the third-team edges in camp, he'll move up sometime later to working with the backups and will eventually have a lesser role with in the edge rush rotation. This would be something close to 35% of defensive plays, like Rasheem Green had last year. He'll also have an important role on kickoff coverage a very mobile but bigger defender with a long reach, someone who can disrupt the blocking schemes for the smaller, faster tacklers to make plays.

4th Round

P Tory Taylor

The trick shots or punts that died or spun out of bounds had impressed Eberflus at one minicamp practice.

They challenged him in different ways rather than just tell him to punt the ball. For instance, one day he had plus-50 punt work. The goal was getting it 50 yards with his normal good hang time. In that practice, he hit the mark 9 out of 10 times.

"To him, that wasn’t good enough," special teams coordinator Richard Hightower said. "When he came off, he was pissed because he wanted to be 10-for-10, and that's what I want.

"So the next time we do it, I want him to be 10-for-10."

The improvement needed will not be entirely in punting. He also holds for placement kicks.

"He was a great college punter," Hightower said. "The league is obviously different, but his skill set transfers.

"I'm looking for growth in open-field punting. I'm looking for growth in his catch-to-kick, holding the ball, his different drops that he uses."

Realistic Scenario: Top 10 in terms of average or net might be too tall a task, especially for a rookie, but mainly because he'll be punting in a place known as death valley for punters. The Hawk rolls in off the lake in November, the not-so-mythical wind that always cuts down punting averages at Soldier Field. It swirls and swats down the punts. Taylor does have great hang time, though, and also leg strength. He'll combat it. Look for him to finish in the upper half of the league and above the 46.5-yard mark for average and in the top 10 for punts killed inside the 20 if not higher.

3rd Round

T Kiran Amegadjie

He just watched practices and did classroom work on assignments, talked to coaches and players because of the recovery from quad muscle surgery suffered last season at Yale. They quizzed him plenty.

"His retention and his ability to spit concepts back, be it protection, blocking schemes, he's been good at that part," Eberflus said.

The former Hinsdale Central player is obviously giddy about getting drafted to play in his hometown.   

"This is my team growing up," he said. "I obviously grew up in the area. It's been amazing.

"I'm really exciting I can contribute to the history and the culture of my favorite team, my favorite sports team in general."

But coming to camp without working on the field yet will make for a tougher training camp. He is expected to be full go once practices begin.

"We project that," Eberflus said. "Again, we'll have to see how the rehab goes in the summer and we'll project all our guys who missed some time to be back to start camp. But again we'll see that as we go."

Realistic Scenario: Starting out as one of the game day inactives until they are certain he has the roles and offense down, then eventually getting onto the bench and into games for special teams. Any time he gets on the field with the offensive starters would depend on injuries and probably wouldn't be limited to tackle, where he played last year at Yale. He also was a guard for a season. The Bears are going to attempt to cross-train him for the other position, but that's not always as easy with rookies, especially when they miss so much offseason work.

1st Round

WR Rome Odunze

Still unsigned, the first order will be to make sure he's under contract. Their ninth pick came away impressed with Shane Waldron's offensive system after spring work. He missed only a short amount of practice time after a soft tissue injury during rookie minicamp and was able to go through and finish 100%.

"I think it's explosive," he said of the offense. "I think it's very dynamic, you know coach Shane has a bunch of different answers for a bunch of different defenses which I think is very important at the NFL level because, you know, defenses are able to disguise so many different things."

Odunze especially enjoyed learning from veterans DJ Moore and Keenan Allen. Moore was even at the QB school for rookies, coaching the receivers and helping at one point.

"I think it'd not even be measurable what they're able to, you know the impact they can make on my career, just being in the room with them for, shoot, I'm losing track of days here, you know four weeks I've already learned so much so to be in a room with them throughout a whole season," he said. "Learning from them in training camp, I think it's just going to take my game to the next level and something I'm super excited about because you know it's not often that you get to come on to the wing of a Hall Of Famer and a soon-to-be Hall of Famer as well."

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Realistic Scenario: Getting around 80 to 90 targets during the season as he tries to figure out the league, and between 50-70 receptions. Seattle managed to get 93 targets to Jaxon Smith-Njigba in last year's Waldron offense and he was the 20th pick of the draft with veteran standouts D.K. Metcalf and Tyler Lockett in the same receiver group. Something similar could be expected for Odunze, with Caleb Williams' arm and decision making proving the deciding factor.

1st Round

QB Caleb Williams

He had trouble with the cadences still as late as the next-to-last day of minicamp. Their quarterback school was available to media for only one day but they didn't do the extensive scrimmaging then that they did in minicamp.

They may still need to go over this aspect of the offense to smooth it out.

Williams felt he left off with a good knowledge of the offense but saw other intangibles also valuable.

"I would say the biggest thing that I accomplished was one, building the connection with my teammates and those relationships," he said. "Hanging out, going to Top Golf, playing vs. Cole (Kmet) and Brett (Rypien and them. Or also just hanging out with the rooks and us going to movies, hanging out, going to dinners and things like that but also being in here laughing and joking, being in the locker room.

"From November 18 to April 25 of not being on a team, so you realize how much you miss it and being in the locker room in those small moments, so making sure we're taking advantage of that. That's one of the biggest. And then also just gaining and building more confidence and trust throughout the Bears and everybody here but also myself within the offense, building that belief, that trust, that confidence and swagger to go out there and play."

Realistic Scenario: It could be anything from a C.J. Stroud type of year to something average for first overall picks, which would be 16 or 17 TD passes and 11 or 12 interceptions. Because the trend in recent years has been for No. 1 overall picks to start their careers strong -- with the exception of Young -- look for something better from the new Bears QB.

A schedule against weaker competition doesn't hurt, either.

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

BearDigest.com publisher Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.