CHICAGO (CBS) – The Chicago Bears donned protective gear for the first time this training camp on Friday, and the energy was high, especially considering it was the first practice with fans fully in attendance.
“We finally got everyone in protective gear, and we’ve been waiting for this moment, especially the offensive and defensive lines,” backup quarterback Tyson Bagent said. “It’s early in camp, so I think the guys are really competing to win. Everybody’s feeling pretty good physically right now, and I think that’s to be expected to some extent, especially on a team that wants to compete and make something happen this year.”
Perhaps the fiercest battle in camp is at center, where two freshmen, Ryan Bates and Coleman Shelton, are engaged in a friendly battle for the starting spot. “Bates is a great player,” Shelton said. “We’re here together every day. We both come in at the same time and we help each other out because that only helps the team. So we’re here together every day learning and working together and striving to be the best we can be.”
Bates added, “All of us in this room love each other. Times like training camp are a time to share pain and build chemistry. At the end of the day, everyone’s trying to win a job, but we’re all trying to make each other better.”
Even if the competition is friendly, fighting for a living every day can still be stressful if you don’t approach it with the same attitude as Bates. “Honestly, I wake up every day and I apologize for the language, but I just say, ‘Fuck you,'” he said. “Whatever happens, happens. Don’t worry about making mistakes. Don’t worry about walking on eggshells. You gotta go.”
Rookie quarterback Caleb Williams was involved in a minor altercation between defensive lineman DeMarcus Walker and several offensive teammates. Bates said he loves that mentality as a quarterback, but Williams might need to be smart about it. Bagent will work hard in the offseason to get an “edge.”
Last year, Tyson Bagent was competing for a backup job as an undrafted rookie. This year, he’s played four games and is preparing to play as the starting quarterback behind Caleb Williams.
The intensity of Friday’s workout was nothing compared to what Bagent experienced this summer. He said he was too busy “keeping face” to worry about the Bears signing another veteran quarterback.
Bagent said he and one of his best friends tried a mile-long burpee long jump, taking an hour and seven minutes.
“I ate a lot after,” he said and shouted out Betty’s Restaurant in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, where he ordered six eggs, bacon, and toast.
Bagent explained that while he might not necessarily be getting better at football with such offseason training, “However, just the mental edge that it gives me, finding out what I can endure versus what the next man can endure, in a sense gives me a little mental edge when I show up to things like this and people start complaining about our schedule. I can have somewhere in the back of my head that I’ve done things far worse than this, that I can handle really anything that’s thrown at me.”
He acknowledged doing burpees and broad jumps for a mile is a little crazy and he would even receive some weird looks from people as he did them. But as he said, it’s all about the mental edge.
Bagent also said he’s trying to share some of his experience as a second-year QB with Williams, although more about what he’s seen on the field, and not as much about burpees.