The Chicago Bears’ win over the New England Patriots on Thursday night cost them a tight end who has been with the team since 2020. On Friday, head coach Ben Johnson opened his press conference with the news: Cole Kmet has a “serious knee injury, like we thought,” and the team would put him on injured reserve later in the day. Asked whether the injury is season-ending, Johnson answered in one word: “Yes.”
Kmet was hurt in the fourth quarter of the 30-24 win at Soldier Field and was carted to the locker room. The Bears drafted him in 2020, and he had missed only one game in his career before Thursday.
“He’s one of the glue guys”
Johnson said Kmet is “one of my favorites for a number of reasons.” He said he still remembers Kmet at the combine “and how much I loved him,” and spoke about being “in the same building with him for the last year and a half.” “I’ve got so much respect for the player that he is, but also for the person, the leader. He’s everything we want to be about here. He’s one of the glue guys,” Johnson said. “He’s a guy that I can count on, whether it’s a messaging standpoint or get to the pulse of the team.”
“He’s going to be sorely missed,” he went on. “He’s Chicago, you know, he’s been here his whole life, and he’s a big part of our heartbeat. So it stinks. It does. I hate it for him. I hate it for his teammates as well. And yet the train keeps rolling on. Someone else has to step up.”
“None” — the offense stays the same
Asked how much the loss changes the playbook, Johnson did not hesitate. “None. None. No,” he said. “We’ve trained all of our tight ends to be able to do all the jobs. And so I don’t see us really changing who we are or what we do as a result of that.” He added that he was not “discounting the impact” of Kmet, calling him “consistently one of the highest graded players on our offense week in and week out,” but said: “In terms of what we do, it’s not going to change a whole lot.”
Rookie Sam Roush is the first in line. “We’ve been very pleased with the improvement that he’s made over these first seven weeks,” Johnson said. “There’s a high likelihood that his rep count’s going to go up.” He said Roush “had some rookie hiccups early in the season like everybody does, and yet he learns, he doesn’t make the same mistake twice.” Undrafted rookie Hayden Large “would certainly be an option,” Johnson said, but “he’s still on IR for us.” He also said he feels strongly about the two tight ends on the practice squad, Stephen Carlson and Qadir Ismail.
“100% on me”
Johnson took the blame for the play before Cairo Santos’ 58-yard field goal, after Caleb Williams said he thought he was fine on depth. “I didn’t do a good enough job communicating to him in that situation,” Johnson said. “I have to do a better job letting them know that it’s more important, the yards are more important for us in that spot than the clock running or burning timeouts on the opposition or anything of that nature. So, 100% on me.”
Of Williams’ night, 22 of 33 for 300 yards and two touchdowns, Johnson said: “This is a great stat line. And yet I can’t wait to sit down with them and go through this line by line.” He said the quarterback “has certainly sped up” and is going through his progressions “a little bit quicker.”
On Luther Burden III, who sparked the offense early, Johnson said the receiver is “elite with the ball in his hands,” but added: “We don’t want it to just be screens or underneath routes. He’s got more to his game than that. He’s got more speed than that, too.” In the first half, he said, Burden “was the story.”
Penalties, and a short break
Johnson was blunt about the flags. “We’re not playing very clean football, very disciplined football from a penalty standpoint,” he said. “There’s too many pre-snap penalties and there’s too many holding penalties right now for us.” He said he was proud that the team keeps overcoming them: “I look forward to the day that we clean those up and see what that looks like.”
He also praised guard Jonah Jackson, who played every snap after leaving the Falcons game. “This guy’s as tough as they come,” Johnson said. “He said early in the week that, hey, I’m playing.”
On the defense, he said: “We’re a better defense than we were a year ago. The biggest difference is we’re not taking the ball away quite as much at this point of the season.” After the Thursday game, he called the coming days “almost like a mini bye week,” a chance to evaluate the roster and the schemes before the Bears return to work.
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