Darnell Mooney practiced Wednesday for the first time since breaking his ankle last November.
Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
No player’s name has come up this offseason more than DJ Moore’s as the Bears have gushed about the most gifted wide receiver they’ve had in a decade. But they have nearly as much riding on two other receivers who were already in the building.
While Moore is very good, he’s not overwhelming enough to carry the offense. General manager Ryan Poles is betting more so on the overall sum of his wide receivers’ talent, and this will only be a thriving, top-10 receiver corps for Justin Fields if the Bears get major contributions from Darnell Mooney and Chase Claypool to round out their passing attack.
Both were on the turf inside the Walter Payton Center when the Bears held their first practice of training camp Wednesday, and that’s a good start considering what each has been through over the past several months. Where they go from here, though, will have a rippling effect on the season.
It was Mooney’s first practice since breaking his ankle in November, and the Bears restricted him to individual drills and a taste of seven-on-seven work as part of his re-acclimation. He and the team have said he is fully recovered and have no concern about getting him back to a normal workload.
A year ago, Mooney was far and away the Bears’ best receiver — their only starting-caliber receiver, in fact —and undoubtedly a vital piece of their future. He was coming off a breakthrough 1,055-yard season and was adamant about proving himself as a true No. 1 receiver.
That didn’t happen, however, and he struggled along with the offense as a whole. Then he went down with the injury and finished with 40 catches, 493 yards and two touchdowns.
He has been resolute about viewing the injury and rehab as a positive, saying he “enjoyed” that process and worked on his mental health during his time out.
It was the first time Mooney, who had done nothing but ascend since the day he arrived at Halas Hall as a fifth-round pick from Tulane in 2020, had encountered any kind of setback in his Bears career.
“It wasn’t the way I was planning it to go,” he said. “I was expecting [to] just continue to ball out. I feel like I did everything I could.”
The upside for Mooney is that his overall track record speaks louder than one rough season and an injury. While Poles surely wants to see that he is fully back before committing to a contract extension, he shouldn’t have any other doubts.
“I’m not a risk,” Mooney said. “I’m that guy you can count on. You don’t have to worry about me doing my job.”
Claypool is a different story, though. There are concerns on multiple fronts, and while he pushed back strongly against any notion that he hasn’t been giving maximum effort since the Bears traded for him last year, he clearly was aware of the skepticism.
When Fields was asked about Claypool’s outlook in May, he said he had “improved tremendously” since last season and, “Seeing his work ethic, his attitude change, you can just see he’s taking another step.”
There is still uncertainty about how good Claypool will be, especially given that a respected organization like the Steelers was eager to unload him just two years after drafting him in the second round out of Notre Dame.
Claypool had just 32 catches for 311 and a touchdown in eight games for Pittsburgh last season, then arrived here with a thud. Bears fans celebrated trading a second-round pick for him as a landmark acquisition, but he managed 14 catches for 140 yards in seven games.
Bears offensive coordinator Luke Getsy and others maintained it was a lot to ask of Claypool to step into a complicated offense midseason, and Claypool said injuries made that process even more difficult.
Regardless of how he and the Bears arrived at this point, he’s going into the final season of his rookie deal with enormous stakes. Poles was asked about a contract extension the day he traded for Claypool as though it was almost a foregone conclusion, but a few months later he told the Sun-Times he needed to see more from him before making that decision.
“It’s the biggest year of my life,” Claypool said. “If anybody thinks my work ethic isn’t matching that, they’re deeply mistaken... I learn from things. I’m always growing, just like everybody in the room should be. They should always grow from their mistakes.”
The ability is there. Claypool totaled 121 catches for 1,733 yards and 11 touchdowns over his first two seasons, and if he resumes that production, the Bears will be happy to pay him.
Moore is the oldest of this trio at 26 and is on a reasonable contract through 2025, so if Poles indeed has the right wide receivers, he could keep them in place for a long time. But he needs to find that out quickly, putting Mooney and Claypool on the clock to prove they should be part of those plans.
