Chicago Bears: Unraveling Continues as Roy Robertson-Harris Out

The hits keep coming for the Chicago Bears. In addition to dealing with a three-game losing streak, the injuries now are piling up. Roy Robertson-Harris is the latest, and he’ll be out for the rest of the season.

The Chicago Bears started out the 2020 season so well and the team and its fans had such high hopes. They started 5-1 and were on top of the NFC. Then things got ugly and got ugly in a hurry. They lost three games in a row and now are out of the playoff picture. Their offense has basically collapsed to the point that many wish they had last year’s offense. Now, the injuries are piling up, threatening to send this season into the toilet.

The Bears suffered a big blow when running back Tarik Cohen went down with a knee injury the cut down his season. That ended up being bigger than first thought. The Bears didn’t have a replacement for him, choosing to use Cordarrelle Patterson as his backup. After ranking 11th in rushing during the first three games, the Bears rank 32nd in the last six weeks. David Montgomery has taken a big chunk of the snaps Without getting much rest. As a result, he suffered a concussion in last week’s game against the Tennessee Titans and is now in the league’s concussion protocol. His status for this week’s game against the Minnesota Vikings is unknown.

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Offensive lineman James Daniels suffered a torn pectoral in Week 5 that cost him the season. Having him go down really sent the offensive line into a downward spiral. Yes, the line wasn’t the greatest before his injury, but when he went down, we saw that Rashaad Coward wasn’t the answer (and the experiment of trying to make him into a real offensive line should be over). Then Cody Whitehair went down with a calf injury and tested positive for the COVID-19 virus. His backup, Sam Mustipher, played one game before he suffered a knee injury. Right tackle Bobby Massie is currently on injured reserve with a leg injury and is likely out for a month. Backup tackle Jason Spriggs also tested positive for COVID and missed last week’s game against the Tennessee Titans.

These injuries have certainly helped take down the offense (and not doing anything before the trade deadline was criminal on the part of general manager Ryan Pace). Now, however, the defense is getting hit with the injury bug. Defensive end Roy Robertson-Harris, who starts there because Bilal Nichols moved over to nose tackle after Eddie Goldman opted out of the season due to COVID, hurt his shoulder. The Bears announced that he’ll need surgery which ends his season.

How does this affect the defensive line?

Mario Edwards is the next man up. He’s done a pretty good job as a backup. Playing in just 19 percent of the defensive snaps, he has two sacks, seven tackles (four tackles for loss), and four quarterback hits. Let’s see what he does when he plays a bigger chunk of the snaps.

Now the defensive line has Akiem Hicks, one of the leaders on the team, and Bilal Nichols, playing out of position, and now Edwards, playing a majority of the snaps for the first time.

The injury to Robertson-Harris could mean the end of his career with the Chicago Bears. The team signed him to a restricted free agent contract this past offseason. That means he’ll be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season. Will the Bears sign him? That is in doubt since next season Nichols likely moves back to his defensive end spot with Goldman back. Edwards is also due to be a free agent after the season. If he plays well, the Bears could re-sign him to be Nichols’ backup.

Nagy feels the team will stick together

Head coach Matt Nagy still feels positive. He feels the team will stick together and work to overcome their adversities. To his credit, despite their struggles, the team continues to play hard until the end of the game. He feels that continues.

We’ll rally around one another. And we’ll fight. We’re fighters. This city is fighters. That’s just kind of who we are: our fans, everyone, all of us together. We’ve got to rally around each other. We’ve got to pull together. And that’s going to be our biggest challenge right now.

Let’s hope this injury bug ends soon. The Chicago Bears have enough problems to deal with without worrying about injuries. This season is certainly heading down the toilet.