Rookie Roush Takes Over After Bears' Kmet Suffers Season-Ending Knee Injury

Rookie tight end Sam Roush will start for the Chicago Bears after Cole Kmet suffered a season-ending knee injury last week.

Kmet caught 30 passes for 347 yards and two touchdowns last season, plus another touchdown in the playoffs. He was drafted in the second round in 2020 and is the longest-tenured player on the roster. Head coach Ben Johnson moved Kmet into more of a blocking role after taking over the team. Roush has caught three of his five targets this season for 33 yards and one first down.

Roush spoke at Halas Hall in Lake Forest. "I'll have to step up in the coming weeks, and I feel confident in my ability to do that," he said. "I'm happy with the way I'm progressing through the season. I think the last couple weeks have gone really well and feel like I'm really starting to get comfortable with the operation and the offense and everything that goes with it."

The Bears selected Roush in the third round of this year's draft because of his college blocking and receiving ability. Some of those plays have not appeared early this season, and criticism reached him on social media. He installed a brick on his phone that locks his social media accounts. "I think just having more confidence in my assignment, not my ability to do it," Roush said. "If I get up on the line and we're running wide zone, being able to confidently make a call and stick with it and not have doubt in my mind that that's what I'm going to do."

Johnson addressed the team about roles using a Chris Rock stand-up routine about a band where one person sometimes plays the tambourine. Johnson said the Bears trained all their tight ends to handle different jobs. He said he could run more jumbo packages if left tackle Ozzy Trapilo keeps progressing from his patellar tendon recovery. "There's a lot of solutions out there to make sure that we can still run the ball, pass protect, and our route-running," Johnson said. "I think we're gonna be OK."

The Bears have not played since beating the Patriots on Thursday and face the Seattle Seahawks on Monday night. Roush used the 11 days between games to step away before returning to practice. "[I'm] just coming in every day with kind of the same approach," Roush said. "I know that my process works, so I'm not going to switch up just because of a short streak of bad performances."