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Sports

4 things we learned at Chicago Bears minicamp, including Robert Quinn’s absence and Dakota Dozier’s injury

The Chicago Bears kicked off their mandatory minicamp Tuesday at Halas Hall — the final piece to the first offseason for a new regime — and it was another bumpy performance for the offense with cornerback Jaylon Johnson and rookie safety Jaquan Brisker coming away with interceptions.Here are four things we heard and saw.AdvertisementBears outside linebacker Robert Quinn celebrates after sacking Giants quarterback Mike Glennon, setting set the franchise’s single-season sacks record on Jan. 2, 2022, at Soldier Field. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)Since the voluntary offseason program opened in April, coach Matt Eberflus has been mindful to thank players just about every time he has spoken about the development of the team.When mandatory minicamp kicked off Tuesday morning at Halas Hall, there was one significant absence. Quinn, the outside linebacker who set a franchise record with 18 ½ sacks last season, was not in attendance after choosing to take a pass on the voluntary portion of the offseason as well.AdvertisementQuinn, the highest earner on the roster at $12.9 million, is subject to a fine for each day he misses.“We’re not talking about that as an organization,” Eberflus said. “We hoped he would be here. (GM) Ryan (Poles) and his staff are going to work through that. I really don’t have any other comment other than that about Robert Quinn.“Yeah, I’ve talked to him. Wished him happy birthday a few weeks ago. … In terms of being here, not being here, I’m going to leave that up to Ryan.”The absence of Quinn, 32, only fuels speculation that the best move for both parties could be a trade. He’s well-traveled and might invite the chance to play with a contender. Quinn is an asset for Poles who will have diminished value by the time the Bears are ready to contend again. The Bears might have to settle for a Day 3 pick in return for Quinn — and they’ll need to find a trade partner with ample salary-cap space — but that’s how it goes for a player over 30 making a lot of money. The Bears don’t have a lot of experience at defensive end after Quinn, but they like Al Quadin-Muhammad, who was on the sideline during practice, and Trevis Gipson is ready for an expanded role after notching seven sacks in 2021. Without Quinn, it would be easier for the coaching staff to get rookie Dominique Robinson on the field to evaluate him.Offensive lineman Dakota Dozier (78) works out during Bears OTAs on May 17, 2022, at Halas Hall. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)Dozier went down at the end of a play late in practice when the ball came loose. After the training staff evaluated him, Dozier was helped onto a cart and taken to the locker room. Eberflus has consistently declined to address injuries. It appeared Dozier suffered a left leg injury, potentially his left knee.The injury is noteworthy considering Dozier, a backup throughout his eight-year with the exception of 2020 when he started 16 games at left guard for the Minnesota Vikings, has been in the mix with the first team. Dozier and Sam Mustipher have gotten the vast majority of reps with the starters at right guard, and it appeared that competition could carry into training camp.If Dozier’s injury is serious, the Bears would have to proceed with Mustipher as the starter, reshuffle the deck with players under contract or perhaps look outside the building for help.AdvertisementEberflus said the team was sticking with its plan of splitting the first half of OTAs and minicamp practices with one group and then the second half with a few changes. That means rookie Braxton Jones remains with the starters at left tackle. Larry Borom is still at right tackle and Teven Jenkins, last year’s second-round pick, is playing right tackle with the second team.“All combinations are open, I’ll just say that,” Eberflus said. “I’m not going to comment on is it yes or no but I’ll say that we have an open lens of all combinations are open. And we’re just trying to find the best five.”Bears defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli during their first training camp practice on April 6, 2019, at Halas Hall. (Brian Cassella, Chicago Tribune)Eberflus considers Marinelli a good friend and mentor after the pair coached together with the Dallas Cowboys from 2013-17. Eberflus said Marinelli, who was the Detroit Lions coach for three years and spent four seasons with the Bears, including three as defensive coordinator, taught him about player-coach relationships.“To be able to show the player that you care through action and to prepare the player to play his best on Sunday,” Eberflus said. “And then you’re able to challenge them and push them past the point they can’t take themselves, and that’s what I learned from Rod. And players, everybody who talks about him just loves him to death. And man, I know when he was here he pushed the guys past the point they couldn’t take themselves.”Marinelli, whom Eberflus called “a dynamic speaker,” will address the Bears at a team meeting Wednesday. Marinelli recently retired from coaching after spending two seasons as the Las Vegas Raiders defensive line coach.Hall of Fame executive Bill Polian, who helped the Bears during their search for new general manager Ryan Poles and Eberflus in January, also watched practice Tuesday.AdvertisementVideos of quarterback Justin Fields and tight end Cole Kmet hitting home runs at Wrigley dominated social media Thursday afternoon.At a team meeting that morning on the final day of OTAs, Eberflus told players he was bringing them to the ballpark and then showed them the Bears’ history playing there from 1921-70.When the Bears arrived at the field, players were split into teams for a multi-event competition that included a home run derby. Fields, who played baseball in high school in Georgia, hit two home runs.“I honestly didn’t think I could hit a home run, but I got a couple out, so I was surprised by that,” Fields said. “Actually, once I saw a few guys go before me and they got close, I was like, ‘All right, this is possible.’ It was awesome. I think everyone had a good time. It was definitely a great team-bonding event.”However, Fields didn’t win the event. Kmet, who played baseball and football at Notre Dame, hit three homers to win the derby, the Bears reported.“I was happy when we were picking teams,” said wide receiver Darnell Mooney, who was on Kmet’s team. “I was like, as long as I get Cole, it doesn’t matter what team I’m on.”

Lifestyle

Meet Adrian Matejka, the first Black editor to lead Poetry magazine in its 110-year history

Adrian Matejka, Indiana’s former poet laureate from 2018-2019, is still trying to figure out Chicago’s bus system. He laughs about missing his bus heading to the Poetry Foundation on Superior Street because a new neighbor recognized him and said, “I love poetry, and heard that you’re the new editor. Let’s talk.”He graciously introduced himself and Matejka offered his thanks to the neighbor for supporting poetry. As he left his building, he watched the bus drive away.Advertisement“I ended up sitting out there pouring sweat with a suit coat on in the sun and made it here — earlier than y’all did, luckily, so I was able to settle down. If you had been here 10 minutes earlier, you would have thought: ‘Man, this guy is in over his head,’” he said.Matejka is laid back with a lilting voice that one can only surmise comes from years of honing his craft in public readings. The list of writing awards he’s been nominated for is long: His third collection of poems, “The Big Smoke,” was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award, the 2014 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, while his most recent collection of poems, “Somebody Else Sold the World,” was a finalist for the 2022 Rilke Prize.AdvertisementThe Poetry Foundation and Poetry magazine announced Adrian Matejka will join Poetry as the new editor. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)Now, the Indiana University Bloomington Ruth Lilly professor in English is also Poetry magazine’s first Black editor in it’s 110-year history. His presence comes after Michelle Boone in 2021 became president of the nonprofit Poetry Foundation, which oversees the magazine. She is the first woman and person of color to lead the institution.Matejka takes the editorship after the Poetry Foundation came under fire for its initial response to protests following George Floyd’s death in 2020 and what some perceived as a slow response in providing financial aid to artists during the pandemic. In June 2020, then Poetry Foundation President Henry Bienen resigned after more than 1,800 people signed an open letter denouncing the foundation for failing to do more to support marginalized artists. Since then, the foundation issued a plan to work toward long-term equity and expanded grant funding.“It’s wild to be the first Black editor … to be the first editor of color at all, it’s a wonderful honor and also points to the complicated legacy of this magazine,” Matejka said. “It’s such a central institution to the work that poets do and at the same time, for a long time, it was incredibly homogenistic.” He said it’s not that dissimilar to the laureateship in Indiana in the sense of a bigger arts organization/entity not really thinking about diversity or how to be representative in these communities until the past 10 years.“When Gwendolyn Brooks won the Pulitzer in poetry in 1950, there wasn’t another Black Pulitzer Prize winner until Rita Dove in 1987. There are long stretches between these acknowledgments and in between the institutions, they are catering to the people who cater to them,” Matejka said. “For a very long time, poetry — the art — was just highlighting white men, occasionally a white woman, an action that reflects our country’s resistance to diversity. The good thing about a democracy is that if you have a lot of voters of color, they can vote for candidates of color, but that’s not how arts organizations work. It’s not how literary journals work. It’s not how magazines work; but now they do. Michelle is here; our staff is incredibly diverse and we’re all holding hands in common cause to make (the magazine) look more like what our community looks like.”We spoke with Matejka at the Poetry Foundation building about his plans as editor of Poetry magazine before his first issue is released in October. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.Q: Did this position seem like a good segue after the laureateship or did you see an opportunity and apply for it?It’s kind of in between those things. I left the laureateship after my two years. COVID happened, but I was still teaching. And then this opportunity presented itself. … When they first interviewed me, I wasn’t sure if it was the right job for me, but I hadn’t talked to Michelle and I hadn’t met the board or the current staff at the magazine. I just was thinking about that (open) letter, thinking about the work that was involved in that and trying to figure out how I might situate myself as a poet but also as someone who thinks about community all the time and thinks about what I can do to support poetry in the world.AdvertisementQ: Can you share your goals for this position? We all know cultural change takes time.I’m lucky because the staff with the foundation and magazine are all committed to that (change). It makes it a little bit easier to start to think about how to affect it when everyone is in agreement that we need to make some changes. Now we have to figure out what that change looks like.For me, it starts with the magazine and how it’s positioned in the world, in the pages. And who are we creating space for on those pages who haven’t been in there before? We’re committed to trying to have a third of each magazine be people who haven’t been published in it before, and this is an ongoing thing.One of the things I decided we were going to do as a magazine is instead of trying to figure out how to rectify all the omissions and erasures that have happened over the long history of the 110 years of this magazine, we’re going to focus on figuring out how to highlight the people that should have been there to start with.In the first issue, there’s going to be a folio of poet Carolyn Rodgers, who’s from Chicago, a phenomenal poet and was never in the magazine, and she’s part of the Black Arts Movement. AdvertisementQ: With the cultural shift, there’s also the building of trust. For those who’ve been unseen for so long, how do you tell them the magazine is working to gain their trust?It’s already showing in the magazine; people aren’t looking in the same way. I hope they will look now. We got a Black president. We’ve got a Black editor. That not only looks different in the staff room, it looks different in the pages too. We can’t really tell them anything that’s going to convince skeptics that change has happened, but when they see it, when we show them through our programming and in the pages themselves, that’s when I think it all starts to become clear that this is a whole other Poetry Foundation.Q: Was there any hesitation on your part in steering this transformation?The challenge for me was trying to figure out whether or not I could be a good steward of this magazine, while also taking care of my own work and how that would affect me, the human being. I’ve been an editor before full-time and I wasn’t able to find a way to write. One of the things that I was thinking about with this job was that maybe there’s a different version of writing I’m supposed to be doing now. Right now is a time where the kind of creating I’m doing is creating spaces for people and making opportunities for others. And if I walk away from that, what kind of person does that make me? Who am I in the world when I was being offered this opportunity to have access to these resources and to have a platform in Poetry magazine to showcase poetry in the world? I’m gonna say “No, I’m good?” I’m going to work on my own poems?That is a perfectly acceptable decision to make and I’m sure some people did, who were approached about the job. It’s not that I don’t understand that. It’s just that so many people helped me as I was coming up as a writer and a scholar, so many people who didn’t have to take their time out to mentor me. They didn’t have to take the time out to look at a poem. The people who stopped their lives to help me, I’d be disrespecting them if I didn’t take advantage of those opportunities to do that for other people.AdvertisementQ: Any plans for community outreach? For those in marginalized communities to come to the Poetry Foundation and engage with you?There are two competing things: incredible need in our community for exposure, access to education about poetry, and there’s a hunger for it. And then there are a number of people who do that work, but then they overextend themselves trying to figure out how to do it. And at a place like the Poetry Foundation, it becomes a question of how do you get here? Are we going to be available in that moment?One of the things that I would like to do with the magazine is turn it outward, and we’re going to people as opposed to them coming to us. That’s going to involve the staff. But a lot of that, at least in my vision going forward, is going to involve contributors and community members who are already doing this work and we can support them because we can’t do it all by ourselves. That’s what I learned as a laureate. … I think that’s the way we’re going to be going forward — not only trying to do the work ourselves but trying to find ways to create connections and create access through already existing organizations.drockett@chicagotribune.com

Sports

Chicago Bears QB Justin Fields understands the offense’s growing pains are inevitable: ‘We’re not ready’

Eighty-nine days before the Chicago Bears kick off the regular season against the San Francisco 49ers at Soldier Field, quarterback Justin Fields was asked if he was itching for the season to start, if his eagerness to test his growth and see the team’s new-look offense in action was eroding his patience.Fields just chuckled.Advertisement“No,” he said Tuesday afternoon. “I’m not ready for the season to start.”The response was firm and emphatic.Advertisement“I’m just being honest,” he said. “We’re not ready to play a game right now.”Quarterback Justin Fields speaks at Bears minicamp Tuesday at Halas Hall. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)Nor should they be. Not in mid-June, not after the massive overhauls the team made this offseason to the front office, coaching staff and roster. This is a one-step-at-a-time reboot, and the Bears starting quarterback is aware enough to understand the hard work has only just begun.The Bears are engrossed in their mandatory minicamp this week at Halas Hall, another stage to continue molding their offense and another chance for Fields to work on his footwork, timing and overall comfort in coordinator Luke Getsy’s system. Still, it’s clear the offense as a whole is a major work in progress and immersed in a trial-and-error phase that is obviously rough around the edges.Fields, for example, occasionally might be a touch late or a tad off with a throw, just like he was late in team drills Tuesday when cornerback Jaylon Johnson jumped a pass to Tajae Sharpe along the left sideline, picked it off and raced to the north end zone of Field 1.Costly mistake. Defensive celebration.Still, that’s also the type of error Fields can reflect on in meetings and post-practice film study, looking to diagnose what exactly went wrong and how he can fix it.“Right now, the coaches are throwing a lot at us,” Fields said. “They’re pretty much throwing the whole playbook at us — which is good. Of course there are going to be mistakes. But we’d rather have the mistakes come right now than later in the fall or in camp.”Fields, as has been well-documented, likely will be climbing uphill for the foreseeable future, particularly with an unproven receiving corps and an unsettled line around him. To the latter point, the Bears continue to move pieces around up front. On Tuesday, their first-unit offensive line consisted of left tackle Braxton Jones, right tackle Larry Borom and interior linemen Sam Mustipher, Lucas Patrick and Cody Whitehair.Advertisement[ [Don’t miss] Column: Chicago Bears offensive line still has big questions — and moving parts — as shown by Teven Jenkins and Braxton Jones ]Bears coaches are working to find the best grouping for what they want to do and might continue to fiddle with things into training camp in July and August.“All combinations are open,” coach Matt Eberflus said.Fields, you would think, would value continuity in his offensive line as soon as possible, wanting to develop a feel for how to operate within the pocket and learning how to distribute his trust. But as of this week, he said he has little anxiety about the fluid nature of the depth chart.“I’m not in a rush,” Fields said. “We still have a lot of time. And at the end of the day, whoever does the job the best is going to be the best fit for us.”Quarterback Justin Fields stretches Tuesday during Bears minicamp at Halas Hall. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)Fields also spoke positively of his glowing connection with Getsy, eager to see that evolve in the months ahead.In the bridge between the end of minicamp Thursday and the opening of training camp next month, Fields stressed his need to continue learning the details of his new playbook and the push to further his connection with his receivers.AdvertisementEberflus has emphasized the same things with his young quarterback and hopes off-campus throwing sessions with teammates will continue to be a part of Fields’ routine during the summer break.“It’s an important factor for timing, to be able to work with each other,” Eberflus said.Receiver Darnell Mooney might be the most dialed in with Fields at this point. And even with the growing pains the offense is enduring, Mooney is encouraged by Fields’ mindset.“He’s just locking in and knowing what he wants to do with this offense, with this team,” Mooney said. “As a quarterback in this league, he wants to take over the league. He’s already Justin Fields. He wants to be the best quarterback in the league. And he’s taken the strides to get there.”That brand of grand rhetoric is expected, of course. And soon it will have to be backed up by high-level on-field production that is consistent and undeniable. To this point, though, the bumps in the road remain obvious.[ [Don’t miss] Chicago Bears sign nose tackle Mike Pennel and release veteran Jeremiah Attaochu on the eve of minicamp ]Eventually, the patience many of the Bears have in working through the rough patches that are inevitable when installing a new offense with a young quarterback will give way to an urgency to start ramping up for Week 1. Balancing that patience and urgency properly will require effort.Advertisement“For me it’s just not making the same mistake twice,” Fields said. “If you make that one mistake on a play, just don’t do it again. And if you ultimately keep getting better growing, there will be (fewer) mistakes each and every day. And, of course, you’ll be right where you want to be.”Tuesday was another reminder that where the Bears want to be offensively is still a long way away. The offense still needs significant time to get there. But the effort needed to pave that road will be substantial.At the start of practice Wednesday, the Bears will be 88 days out from their opener as the countdown to their bigger tests continues.ExpandAutoplayImage 1 of 15New Bears coach Matt Eberflus speaks after being introduced on Jan. 31, 2022, at Halas Hall. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

News

Where the bars are

You can still find new friends at the bars. Credit: Bill Roundy for Chicago Reader Are rainbow-festooned events full of glitter, sequins, and boas signs of…