Alarms went off when Bears wide receiver Rome Odunze said last month he was learning to accept a “new normal” after recovering from a stress fracture in his right foot, and he really wishes he hadn’t phrased it that way.
It raised questions about whether a player the Bears believed would be a game-changer when they drafted him No. 9 overall in 2024 would have to recalibrate his potential, and that already was a concern after two seasons in which Odunze has been good, but not great.
He tried to revise his comments — “I just set up a fastball for y’all,” he said with a laugh — after practice Thursday, but that doesn’t necessarily invalidate everything he originally said. With training camp underway, his foot feels “amazing” and he was unwilling to scale back any expectations.
“It’s not even really something that I think about anymore, which I think is the best thing I think you can have after an injury,” Odunze said. “I know ‘new normal’ has a bunch of connotations of chronic and severe [injury] like it’s never going to be the same, [but] it’s not like that at all. I’m completely fine.”
He was fast and dynamic Thursday morning with several catches, including an intermediate pass on the left sideline in which he beat cornerback Tyrique Stevenson in zone coverage.
With injuries like this, though, it always comes down to longevity. Will Odunze hold up once the Bears go to padded practices next week and throughout the grind of the regular season? Nothing he says now will quiet those questions. He has to answer them on the field.
While he might wish he’d used different terminology, Odunze’s initial “new normal” comments were extensive and detailed. It wasn’t as minor as a mere misspeak.
He talked about how he’d “never really had an injury like that” and how much it prevented him from running the way he wanted. He said the break created “a different type of foot structure with those bones” going forward. And while he insisted even then that it wouldn’t affect his career trajectory, his expectation was that, “It’s never really back to normal.”