Bears general manager Ryan Poles can’t guarantee cornerback Kyler Gordon will play for the team again.
“I don’t know,” he said Tuesday. “I would hope so. I still have hope there. He’s going to have to continue to work hard to get back to playing football.”
It was the latest twist in the bizarre case of Gordon’s calf injury, which kept him out of most offseason activities and all of training camp. He was put on the physically unable to perform list at the start of training camp and remained there when the team made cuts Sunday, meaning he has to miss at least the first four games of the season.
Gordon has been rehabbing with Bears trainers — and, like most players, has outside help, too. Poles was asked whether there was a disconnect between what pain Gordon has told the team he’s feeling as opposed to the Bears’ assessment of his injury.
“Any time you have an injury and you’re coming back from something, there’s a discomfort you have to push through,” he said. “And that’s what it comes down to. We haven’t been able to get over that hump and we’re not progressing as fast as we’d like to.”
Still, it’s not hard to read between the lines.
Tuesday, Poles said the other two players on PUP, linebacker Noah Sewell and defensive lineman Shemar Turner, were “doing a really good job with our performance team” and that they were “fired up to start that clock and get going.”
His next sentence?
“And then Kyler is on that list as well,” he said. “We’ll see when he comes back. I don’t have a timetable. We’ll see how that goes.”
Poles said in late July that there was a “delay” in Gordon’s recovery after he spent the team’s summer break doing rehab at Halas Hall. He said then that it was “all hands on deck to get him back” and that there was frustration from both Gordon’s side and that of the team. That’s been apparent whenever coach Ben Johnson is asked about Gordon — he’s given curt answers, usually saying that he had no update.
In most circumstances, a coach would offer platitudes about how the player has rehabbing intently or how excited the team would be to get him back. Instead, these are the full answers Johnson has given about Gordon in the last month or so.
When asked about his status Aug. 18, Johnson said “there’s nothing to add right now.”
Asked about it Aug. 15, Johnson replied with one word: “Unknown.”
On Aug. 6: “There’s no update. Just continue to rehab.”
Gordon traveled with the team to Cincinnati for their joint practice and exhibition game but did not go to Nashville last week.
The Bears signed Gordon to a three-year, $40 million extension in April 2025. The Bears were excited about his presence — in coordinator Dennis Allen’s opening press conference, Gordon was the only player he mentioned by name.
Gordon, though, struggled through a series of injuries last year, at first early in training camp and then, bizarrely, when he was added to the injury report on an off day before the season opener. He returned in October, got hurt the following week, and returned again in November before getting hurt in warmups before the Bears’ rivalry game in Green Bay. He was dynamic in the playoffs, though, providing a glimpse of what the Bears paid so handsomely for.
He played in only three regular-season games, though, and started only one.
“This spring was going to be a springboard for us to get going the right direction,” Johnson said in June.
It never happened.