Eberflus acknowledged that Patrick injured his right hand in Thursday’s practice. While no timetable was given for his return, the Bears coach said: “He is going to be out for a little bit of time. It’s not just a soft tissue injury or something where he might be out a couple days. This is more than that.”
Eberflus also revealed that Jenkins is “working through something with the trainers” and is day-to-day. The Bears coach told reporters before the start of training camp that he wasn’t going to disclose injury details because it’s not required by the NFL until the regular season and he doesn’t want to volunteer that information to opponents.
Jones made great strides during the offseason. The 6-5, 310-pounder impressed coaches with his athleticism and football intelligence while working with the No. 1 offense at left tackle in the final six spring practices.
Another candidate to be the starting left tackle is veteran Riley Reiff , who signed with the Bears Tuesday. The 6-6, 305-pounder has been a full-time starter the past nine seasons with the Lions (2013-16), Vikings (2017-20) and Bengals (2021).
“Riley’s still working back in,” Eberflus said. “He’s in a ramp-up phase because he hasn’t been in the program and just coming off of where he was. So, what we’re going to do is work him into individual, then we start to open the reps: he’s got two reps here, four reps here, he’s got the whole period, then he’s got two periods, so forth and so on. You just progress it as you go.”
Patrick’s absence gave Kramer a chance to work with the No. 1 offense. Eberflus described the 6-2, 300-pounder, who was a three-year starter at Illinois, as “super smart” and “able to make all the calls.”
“Sometimes you think, ‘well, mentally it might be too big for somebody to make the ‘Mike’ points and change protections with the quarterback and make the line calls and be the point guy on that,'” Eberflus said. “It’s not. He’s able to do that.
“Now, the physical side of it, he has to learn…
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