Antwaan Randle El has been a first-team All-Big Ten player, a first-team NFL All-Pro and a Super Bowl champion. At 45, though, he got to experience something perhaps just as thrilling: coming home.
The Bears hired the former Thornton High School and Steelers great as their wide receivers coach and assistant coach in January. He was tickled, but not as much as his family was — including his grandmothers, who are 96 and 85. Since he came to Chicago in January, he has seen his parents twice a week, even though they’re 80 minutes from Lake Forest by car. There are aunts, cousins and friends, too.
“I’ve got folks here,” he said Thursday.
That Randle El can share this with them makes it even more special. He grew up a Bears fan listening to “The Super Bowl Shuffle” and playing “TECMO Bowl” as his favorite team. He always wondered what it would be like to play for the Bears — and came close before he eventually signed with the Commanders in free agency in 2006.
Coaching for the Bears feels just as cool.
“[I was] growing up and watching the Bears, and rooting for them when [I wasn’t] playing them,” the former wide receiver said. “It’s always been a thing for me to get back here, and the way it happened . . . I’m excited, and I’m thankful.”
It was hard not to be sentimental when he joined new coach Ben Johnson’s staff “because I wanted to get focused and locked in,” said Randle El, who worked alongside Johnson from 2021 to 2024 as the Lions’ receivers coach. “But it just catches up with you. It wasn’t weird. It was just like, ‘Man, this is really happening. This is it.’ . . . [I] had to shut it off, kind of get focused, because . . . we have a lot of work to do.”
A well-known Chicago-area prep player, Randle El was drafted by the Cubs out of high school but chose to attend Indiana, where he played quarterback for the Hoosiers, as well as baseball and basketball.
“‘El’ is a stud,” Johnson said last month. “Not only will he help everybody out tremendously, but he’s going to make this offense, he’s going to make this team, he’s going to make this receiver room, better. He’s going to leave it better than he found it. I know that for certain. . . . He’s got a special energy and aura about him that just rubs off on everybody.”
Cross-training Kyler
Kyler Gordon is going nowhere. But he might be on the move anyway.
Four days after the Bears agreed to give their slot cornerback a three-year, $40 million contract extension, new defensive coordinator Dennis Allen said he wanted Gordon to practice different positions as a contingency plan and to give the coaches options in certain situations. Gordon will get some practice snaps at either outside cornerback or safety, Allen said.
“I think that’s important in today’s football, where you’re not just locked into one thing,” he said.
Notes
Left tackle Braxton Jones has been at Halas Hall to rehab his surgically repaired ankle every day since the new coaching staff was hired, offensive line coach Dan Roushar said. He didn’t have a timeline for Jones’ return, and couldn’t say whether he’d be ready before training camp, but he praised his work ethic.
“If he were healthy today, he would be our left tackle and we would have confidence in him doing the job,” Roushar said.
— Linebacker T.J. Edwards signed his two-year, $20 million extension Thursday. Allen said Edwards plays “probably a step faster than really what his timed speed is, because he’s so instinctive.”
