Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune answers your questions:
Who is the starting left tackle Week 1? — @brendo120
That’s a real unknown and a question one would imagine the Bears hope to have an answer for before the preseason starts. Braxton Jones’ recovery from ankle surgery clouds the situation. If he’s ready to go at the start of training camp, he’s probably right in the mix.
One question the Bears have to answer — and there are a bunch — is how do they get their best five linemen on the field. If we agree that left guard Joe Thuney, center Drew Dalman, right guard Jonah Jackson and tackle Darnell Wright are four of their best five, it’s a little easier to play the guessing game. In that case, Jones, Kiran Amegadjie and maybe Wright are options at left tackle, with Wright and second-round pick Ozzy Trapilo the choices at right tackle.
Would the Bears be comfortable with Wright on the left side? He played some there at Tennessee but was primarily a right tackle in college, and the Bears drafted him to play on the right side. Is Trapilo potentially significantly better at right tackle than Jones or Amegadjie is at left tackle? In that scenario, perhaps Wright plays left tackle and Trapilo starts at right tackle. I don’t think Wright would be in his best position at left tackle, but maybe he’d take to it naturally.
That’s a long way of saying it’s premature to do anything but guess who will be the left tackle in Week 1.
It’s definitely premature. But thinking about these things in the offseason is one reason why the NFL is a 365-day-a-year sport.
I have to believe that the Bears had a plan when they drafted Trapilo. You don’t take a player in the second round unless you plan for him to start sooner rather than later. My gut tells me that he was drafted to play right tackle.
I’m going to leave Amegaji out of this since, like everyone else, I have no idea what to make of him. He was drafted in the third round, and it is evident he was taken based on traits. He was a boom or bust pick, and he probably still isn’t ready to start.
So that leaves, in an ideal world, Jones and Wright competing on the left. Again, I’ll point to the fact that they drafted Trapilo in the second round as evidence that the Bears feel that Wright might be the better choice. Otherwise, you don’t draft a replacement for him on the right side.
This reasoning all assumes that everyone, especially Trapilo, plays like Ryan Poles thinks they can play. But they play the games for a reason, and that certainly might not be the case. The odd man out here would be Jones, but I’ve never been as down on him as some other people have. With all of the improvements that they’ve made on the interior, if he’s your worst-case scenario at left tackle, I don’t think that you are doing that badly.