Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune answers your questions:
Are the Bears going to be forced to push Ozzy Trapilo into the lineup before he’s ready? So far, none of the above seems to be the answer to the question of who’s leading the way at left tackle. Braxton Jones is still setting too deep and catching rushers. Jedrick Wills Jr., Theo Benedet and Kiran Amegadjie have been inconsistent against twos. — @felicellijoe
What the Bears say now and what they do down the road could differ. But if you put stock in the message they’ve delivered since Trapilo returned to practice on a limited basis, they’ve made it clear he’ll have his own plan for recovering and returning. One thing Ben Johnson said that resonated with me is they want to give him time to build his confidence back up.
One of the things that’s been bugging me about this is th eimplicit assumption by both fans and the media (not necessarily Biggs) that Trapilo is just going to return to the field and be as good as he was before he was ruptured his patellar tendon in January. His return to this point has been impressive given the initial estimates that he’d be unable to play until at least December.
Accoriding to a study published in The Physician and Sportsmedicine, though About 77% of professional athletes are able to return to their sport, athletes frequently see a statistically significant decrease in their performance metrics during their first post-operative season. For many, performance does not fully recover to baseline levels until the second or third season following the injury.
It is not coincidence that Trapilo has been unable to practice in 11-on-11 drills ot this point and it would be great to see him geet back onto the field. But he’s still facing an uphill battle to get back to the point where he was and he may still not be significantly better that Braxton Jones for quite a while yet.