OL Carter continues to take inspiration from late brother
The Bears held their second day of rookie minicamp Saturday in Lake Forest. The 11-man draft class continued to learn the ropes amid a pack of 69 players that also included 16 undrafted rookies under contract and a horde of tryout players.
Here are four things we learned.
1. Offensive lineman Ja’Tyre Carter continues to honor the memory of his late brother.
Carter, one of three seventh-round picks, arrived at Halas Hall this week with wide eyes. He is from a one-stoplight town in White Castle, La., and journeyed to the NFL through Southern University in the NCAA’s Football Championship Subdivision.
So when he pulled into Bears headquarters for rookie minicamp, it was an experience.
“Crazy,” Carter said. “It was a sight, man. Just coming from where I come, small school in high school and college, it was a lot to take in.”
An offensive tackle at Southern, Carter is beginning a transition to guard and will have to fight the next four months to earn a roster spot. He said he pushes himself every day in honor of his older brother, Orthello, who was killed in a car accident when Ja’Tyre was in high school.
The crash occurred just days short of Orthello’s high school graduation, Carter said. The two were high school teammates — Orthello played on the defensive line — and also played basketball and participated in track and field with one another.
“I take him everywhere I go,” Carter said. “He just helps me keep going. … He’s in my heart. Everywhere I go, he’s right there. He’s got a special place.”
Carter described his older brother as a quiet guy who was “cool to everybody.”
“He was a good kid,” he said. “It was unfortunate that happened.”
2. Offensive lineman Braxton Jones is trying to stay consistent with his recovery process after a year packed with football and training.
Jones, whom the Bears drafted in the fifth round, comes from a Southern Utah program that played a spring and fall season in 2021.
FCS teams such as Southern Utah played spring games after the 2020 season was disrupted by COVID-19. That means Jones, who followed up the spring season by starting 11 fall games at left tackle, has had little break from football for more than a year, including spending the last several months training for the draft.
Jones said maintaining consistency in his recovery process will be key as he continues his work in minicamp and then organized team activities this month.
“This weekend has been a little bit more difficult with that,” he said, “in terms of the schedule is a little bit more crammed and you don’t necessarily have as much time for recovery. But you still can get it in there.
“That’s the biggest thing for me is making sure I’m staying on top of those things and really making sure I’m putting time away for recovery. Because it’s super important, especially knowing that it’s not going to stop anytime soon and that we’re just going to pick up and keep on going as the season goes.”
Jones, one of four offensive linemen the Bears drafted on Day 3, said his main focus this weekend is to show he is coachable.
“When the coach tells you your first step is slow, you go out there over and over again and try to correct that first step,” he said. “That was a big thing for me, even yesterday, was just that first step was too slow and behind me, so I wasn’t gaining enough ground to get to where I need to be.
“Some of these guys when I get to training camp are going to be much faster than they are now. So that’s very important, just being coachable and understanding, looking at the coach and being like, ‘Yes, I understand that. I can pick that up.’ And then I can translate it on the field.”
3. Defensive coordinator Alan Williams says there’s a lot to like about the two defensive backs the Bears drafted in the second round.
Williams gave his scouting reports on Washington cornerback Kyler Gordon and Penn State safety Jaquan Brisker, whom the Bears drafted with the 38th and 49th picks.
He started with Gordon’s size: 6 feet, 194 pounds.
“Thickness. He’s not a frail guy. He’s a thick guy,” Williams said. “And then the attributes that Mom and Daddy gave him. He has speed. He has the right temperament that we like. He is athletic. He runs.
And then we look at the football IQ. He’s instinctive.
“And then you go to the stuff that he did on tape. Sticky in coverage. At the top of the route, he stays connected. And then he finished plays, which is the most important thing that, at the moment of truth, he makes the play.”
Williams said Brisker elicited a “huge yes” from multiple people on the Bears scouting and coaching staffs as they were evaluating players. Wililiams then used one of coach Matt Eberflus’ abbreviations in his description of Brisker.
“(Eberflus) would say M&M. He would say motor and mean,” Williams said. “And then he would say he has quickness, he has instincts, he has strike. Those are things we saw on tape.”
4. Williams is eager to take full control of the defense.
Yes, Eberflus is a defensive-minded coach who spent the last four seasons as the Indianapolis Colts coordinator, and he has certain philosophies and a clear vision for how he wants his defense to run.
But Williams will get autonomy to run his own show and has been thankful to his boss for that freedom.
“He’s been A-plus,” Williams said of Eberflus. “I don’t know if many people could do that — have a defensive background and let someone else go and put their stamp on things. But so far he’s done that. I can’t say how much I appreciate that.”
Williams worked under Eberflus as the Colts defensive backs coach the last four seasons. So it’s not as if he came to Halas Hall implementing drastic changes or suggesting significant overhauls. The foundation of the Bears defense will be incredibly similar to what Eberflus ran in Indianapolis.
“The fundamentals of what we do have been around for a very long time,” Williams said. “And (Eberflus) has kind of stayed away so that I can put my stamp on it, so I can put my personality into it. I commend him for that.
“In every meeting and every practice, he’s not looking over my shoulder to where I have to go, ‘Oh, am I doing things right?’ He has kind of stayed away and said, ‘Alan, you take it, you run with it, you build it, you do it. Put your stamp on it.’ And then he has kind of stayed back.”