Bears News: Jaylon Johnson nears return, Kyler Gordon still questionable against Lions

Ariana Pensy · Correspondent · 6 hours ago

CHICAGO - Going into Chicago’s season opener, it was already known that cornerback Jaylon Johnson could miss the game. However, cornerback Kyler Gordon’s appearance on the inactive list was a little more of a surprise. According to head coach Ben Johnson, this issue had been brewing over the course of the week in practice and ultimately prevented him from playing on Monday night.

“Kyler, over the course of last week, was starting to feel some tightness,” Johnson said. “He ended up feeling, we came in on Sunday, I believe, and talked to our trainers about it for the first time, and so, we put him on the injury report and felt like he wasn’t quite ready to go.”

Gordon was also not able to practice on Wednesday, putting his availability for the Bears’ next game, against the Detroit Lions, on Sun. Sept. 14 (Noon / FOX), into question. However, Jaylon Johnson was a full participant, making it seem more likely that he will be able to play.

There was a lot of outside pressure on quarterback Caleb Williams to perform in Chicago’s season opener.

In the run game, he was impressive as he averaged 9.7 yards per carry and scored the Bears’ only rushing touchdown. He also finished the game as Chicago’s leading rusher.

“He’s got the elusiveness in the pocket and then I think he’s got underestimated ability to really turn on the jets and so, we’ve got a number of athletic players on our defense and (I) saw it all throughout training camp, him being able to break the pocket and some of our athletics DNs or linebackers. He’s able to extend the play that way,” Johnson said. “So, that came to life (Monday) night and we certainly needed those rushing yards. We were drying up a little bit there in the running game and so, he was able to help complement that and move the sticks.”

Williams was about the only bright spot in the run game. Johnson tried to run the ball with wide receiver DJ Moore a few times, although that only resulted in eight yards. On running back D’Andre Swift’s 17 carries, he only recorded 53 yards, so that was not working either.

Johnson attributes this partially to the protection from the offensive line, as well as the run game's general struggles.

“Anytime you don’t rush for as many yards as you were hoping for, you look at the stat sheet and it said for 100 yards. But, really, a lot of those were from Caleb and so, we need more from our runners, whoever that is, receivers or the running back room. It doesn’t matter and so, I think in the run game, we were subpar overall and then protection had spurts of being really good and then other times where we didn’t give Caleb enough time,” Johnson said. “So, you get down by a couple scores, you make it a drop back game and it makes it a little bit easier for the defense to tee-off on you. That’s not where we want to live necessarily. We like to keep them guessing as much as we possibly can. So, we got to make sure that we’re still playing with a lead there.”

Looking at the passing game, it was really a mixed bag. The first 10 pass attempts were great as Williams completed all of them.

He made some throws in tight windows, although he also missed some throws, such as his pass to Moore on Chicago’s fourth-down attempt during the second quarter.

“There were some things that he did that were topnotch and I would put him up there with some of the best in the NFL. He had a couple throws with guys in his face that he delivered on target that were very tough,” Johnson said. “I thought he did a good job evading when he felt pressure and yet, there were still some that we would like to have back. There were probably three or four of them that we counted on tape that, at a minimum, that we would want back … He’s very self-reflective on it and critical of himself and so, it’s a starting point for us and we’re looking to get better next week.”