📰 NEWS FLASH: The Bears’ injury trend is turning troubling as indicators suggest their defense may have to lean on reserve linebackers yet again ⚡. DH
D’Marco Jackson and Amen Ogbongbemiga could be called upon again to guard the middle of the defense, while the secondary is looking healthy.
An injury report on a Tuesday before a Friday game when the Bears didn’t even practice normally would mean little.
It’s only projection of what would have happened if they practiced.
Still, this one might have been as revealing as it gets in relation to the availability of players for later in the week.
When players are out on Tuesday and there are only two more days and one more practice until the game, it’s a more definitive statement than in a normal work week’s Wednesday injury report. However, there will be an injury report for Thursday this week, a day prior to the game, and that’s not normally the case with a Sunday game.
T.J. Edwards being listed as unable to practice Tuesday is an indication they’ll be without their middle linebacker starter for the seventh time this year, as he continues getting over hamstring and hand injuries.
The Bears are used to Edwards at the top of their tackles chart and he has just 32 this year due to six games missed.
Edwards missed the season-opening loss to Minnesota with a hamstring injury, left during the Week 2 loss at Detroit (hamstring) and then returned in Week 6 against Washington. He played in four straight games starting with the Washington game, then left in the win over the Bengals in Week 9.
If he misses this game, the Bears probably would have been better off putting him on IR and adding another player to the roster from the practice squad or waiver wire. This will be the fourth straight game he’ll sit. IR stays must be a minimum of four games.
Linebackers Ruben Hyppolite II (shoulder) and Noah Sewell (elbow) also would not have practiced Tuesday. Hyppolite suffered his injury last week and Sewell had his a week earlier.
Without them and Edwards, and with Tremaine Edmunds still on IR, it looks like another week when the Bears lean heavily on players like D’Marco Jackson and Amen Ogbongbemiga at linebacker. The two had very little experience in the regular season, let alone experience with the Bears, but came through with 29 tackles last week, 15 by Jackson in a start but 14 by Ogbongbemiga in less than a full game.
“I think you’ve got to give credit to the coaching staff,” safety Kevin Byard said about the effectiveness of defensive subs. “I spoke about this before, but DA (defensive coordinator Dennis Allen), even in the spring, he cross-trained a lot of guys on this team. If it was—just using a random example like Kyler Gordon—he was taking reps at safety, he was taking reps at nickel, taking reps at corner. (Allen) has done it for a lot of guys. Whether it was Tremaine and T.J. flipping sides, everybody’s kind of gotten different reps at different spots that really understand the schematics of the defense.
“I think now that guys have been able to come in, if they were practice squad guys, whatever it be, have been able come in and play is because I think just the job the coaching staff has done to prepare everybody. Then, obviously it’s easier said than done.”
In the secondary, Byard pointed to Nahshon Wright.
“You look at a guy like Nahshon, who wasn’t projected to be a starter this year, or you talk about D’Marco just this past week, the trust that the coaching staff has in those guys to execute, but then at the same time, those guys going out there balling out making plays.”
Another defensive injury they may need to adjust for is Dominique Robinson’s concussion, suffered Sunday.
Robinson hasn’t had much of a pass-rush impact but coaches always point out how much he has improved at stopping the run.
The only other new injury keeping a player out of practice would have been a foot injury backup guard Luke Newman suffered. Every other active player would have practiced, as well as two key players on injured reserve, Jaylon Johnson and Kyler Gordon.
