PHOENIX — The Bears aren’t sure who their starting left tackle will be after Ozzy Trapilo suffered a major knee injury in the playoffs, but the ambiguity extends well beyond this season.
Trapilo, a second-round pick a year ago, will miss most or all of the season because of a ruptured patella tendon, leaving Bears coach Ben Johnson to sort out a competition between Braxton Jones, Theo Benedet, Kiran Amegadjie and free-agent pickup Jedrick Wills.
That’s far from ideal, and Johnson left open the possibility of drafting a long-term answer at left tackle because of the unknowns with Trapilo.
“You’d love to have your long-term starter for the next 10 years locked up,” Johnson said Monday at the NFL Annual Meeting. “There’s a lot of uncertainty, though. … It’s hard to say right now what that left tackle spot’s going to look like this year or five years from now.”
The Bears could target a replacement with the No. 25 pick, and if they end up with a surplus of good offensive tackles, they’ll have a trade asset.
Johnson managed a four-way battle for the spot last season and expressed frustration publicly throughout that competition. Jones opened as the starter, then got benched for Benedet, who got benched for Trapilo.
Trapilo started the final six regular-season games and the wild-card game against the Packers and made enough progress to take hold of the position for the foreseeable future before the injury.
Jones, who started 40 games over his first three seasons, appears to be the leader at left tackle for now. He missed the end of the 2024 season with a broken ankle that disrupted his ensuing offseason training and wasn’t back to full strength at the start of last season. He also got hurt in practice during the season and ended up playing just six games.
However, with the Bears short on salary-cap space and limited in draft capital, they re-signed him to a one-year deal.
“He still didn’t feel 100% like himself,” Johnson said. “What he put on tape those first four games, he didn’t feel like was very reflective of what he’s capable of. Looking back at it, we would agree with that. There’s more in there than what we saw.
“He came in when he signed the contract [March 13] and he looked like a brand-new man. This guy was beefed up. … He’s very determined to get his career trajectory back to where it was before.”
