Chicago Bears Open Camp With Six on Injury Lists and a Division Title to Defend

The Chicago Bears reconvened this weekend with something they haven't carried into a training camp in nearly two decades: the burden of being good. Rookies and quarterbacks reported to Halas Hall on Saturday, veterans arrive Tuesday, and the first practice of Ben Johnson's second camp goes Wednesday. Last year's team won the NFC North at 11-6, snapped a 15-year playoff-win drought with a delirious comeback against Green Bay — down 21-3 at halftime, 25 fourth-quarter points, a 31-27 wild-card win — and then came within an overtime field goal of the NFC title game before the Rams ended it, 20-17. This year's Chicago Bears news cycle starts with a different question — and a longer injury list than anyone at Halas Hall would like.

Six Players Open Camp on Injury Lists

The first hard news of the week was the roster housekeeping. The Bears placed five players on the physically-unable-to-perform list and one on the non-football-injury list:

• Kyler Gordon (CB, PUP) — the slot corner was limited last season and missed minicamp work.
• Shemar Turner (DT, PUP) — tore his ACL midway through 2025.
• Noah Sewell (LB, PUP) — Achilles injury suffered late in the season.
• Ozzy Trapilo (OT, PUP) — patellar tendon injury; reportedly out until the second half of the season.
• Keyshaun Elliott (LB, PUP) — the rookie missed chunks of OTAs and minicamp.
• T.J. Edwards (LB, NFI) — fractured his fibula in the January playoffs but was back moving in June.

Players on the active/PUP list can be activated any time, so none of this is season-defining yet. But two of the six are linebackers, a third is the nickel corner, and the defense was already the side of the ball with questions.

The Offensive Line Shuffle Nobody Asked For

The strangest story of the Bears' offseason remains the sudden retirement of Pro Bowl center Drew Dalman after five NFL seasons — a genuine shock that forced Chicago to rebuild the middle of a line that had become a strength. The stopgap answer is veteran Garrett Bradbury, with rookie Logan Jones drafted as the long-term project and already pushing for the job. At left tackle, with Trapilo shelved, it's Braxton Jones's spot to lose against free-agent addition Jedrick Wills Jr. and third-year man Kiran Amegadjie. The interior remains the good news: Joe Thuney was named the NFL's Protector of the Year, Jonah Jackson made second-team All-Pro, and right tackle Darnell Wright earned All-Pro recognition of his own. At least one outlet grades this group a top-five unit even after the Dalman surprise — but that ranking assumes the center and left tackle answers hold up, and Johnson himself admitted after OTAs that "it's hard to say who's up, who's down, who's trending sideways" until the pads come on.

Caleb Williams, Year Three, Minus DJ Moore

The other franchise-shaping move of the offseason: Chicago traded DJ Moore to Buffalo for a second-round pick, betting that Caleb Williams's development matters more than continuity at receiver. Williams enters year three off a season in which he broke Erik Kramer's 30-year-old franchise record with 3,942 passing yards — agonizingly short of becoming the first Bears quarterback ever to hit 4,000 — and he made his NFL Top 100 debut this week, ranked ahead of several established quarterbacks, a development that will play beautifully in Green Bay and Detroit. The supporting cast now leans heavily on the tight ends — the Bears believe they have two of the best in football in Colston Loveland and Cole Kmet — and on Williams turning last year's flashes into a consistent, in-rhythm passing operation. That was the exact critique in every camp preview this week: the playmaking is elite, the turnover avoidance is real, and the layup accuracy still comes and goes. With a reshuffled line snapping to a new center, Johnson's offense has to prove last season's late-year surge travels.

Defense: Back to Basics, New Back End

Coordinator Dennis Allen was unusually candid about what went wrong in 2025, admitting the staff "focused so much on installing all the scheme... that we lost sight of some of the fundamentals and techniques." The fix is a back-to-basics camp for a front four of Montez Sweat, Gervon Dexter Sr., Grady Jarrett and ascending Austin Booker — a group that managed just 35 sacks last season despite the division title, and whose top four linemen count $44.1 million against the 2026 cap. The secondary got a genuine overhaul: Kevin Byard, Jaquan Brisker and Nahshon Wright are gone, replaced by free-agent safety Coby Bryant — fresh off a Super Bowl win in Seattle — first-round safety Dillon Thieneman, and fourth-round corner Malik Muhammad, who has made no secret that he wants a starting job immediately. With Gordon opening camp on PUP and Jaylon Johnson coming off his own injury-marred year, the depth behind Tyrique Stevenson will get tested early. The good news there: Terrell Smith is finally healthy after missing all of 2025 with a torn patellar tendon, and versatile veteran Cam Lewis was added to play anywhere in the back end. Bryant, meanwhile, has been openly cast as Thieneman's mentor — the veteran ballhawk showing the first-rounder how the job works while both of them play.

There's an expiration date hanging over the whole operation, too. The four veteran linemen are on the books together for one more run, Booker is reportedly the only pass rusher likely to remain past 2027, and a half-dozen Bears are playing on expiring contracts. Camp performances in August will move real money in March. That kind of urgency can curdle into tightness, or it can sharpen a team — and which way it breaks is largely Johnson's job to manage.

What's Next on the Calendar

Camp ramps up quickly. After Wednesday's opening practice, the Bears build toward joint practices with Cincinnati on August 20 and Tennessee on August 27, each attached to a preseason game — Johnson has made no secret that he values those controlled reps against other teams more than exhibition snaps. The Chicago papers spent the weekend making the same point from different angles: the Sun-Times argued the Bears need to back up their offseason talk — especially on offense — with a sharp start to camp, because this roster has officially run out of rebuilding excuses. Then the season opens September 13 at Carolina, a matchup the schedule-makers effectively gift-wrapped: Chicago has won seven of the last eight against the Panthers, including a 36-10 blowout two years ago, and Bryce Young has thrown six interceptions against two touchdowns in his three career openers. It's the softest possible landing for a team with real expectations — which, of course, is exactly the kind of game good teams win and pretenders fumble away.

The Standard Has Moved

A year ago, Bears camp was about whether Ben Johnson could drag a broken offense into modernity. He did, and then some. Now the questions are narrower and harder: can a re-centered offensive line protect the franchise quarterback, can the pass rush justify its payroll, and can a young secondary survive September? The Chicago Bears open practice Wednesday with a division title to defend and a fan base that finally expects January football instead of hoping for it. As problems go, that's the kind you want — but it stops being charming the moment the pads come on this week.