A familiar face is back in the fold at Halas Hall.
The Bears have announced that they’ve re-signed tight end Bradley Sowell to their active roster. Sowell was waived less than a week ago to make room for defensive lineman Abdullah Anderson, who was promoted from the practice squad to bolster a defensive line that just lost Bilal Nichols to a broken hand. Because of the injury, Sowell was the odd-man-out despite having made a sacrifice to change positions in the offseason.
Now, Sowell returns as insurance for Trey Burton – whose return is coming along slowly through two games. Burton played in 43.3 percent of the offense’s snaps in Week 2 at Denver, then 60.3 percent of snaps on Monday against Washington. To put those numbers in perspective, Burton played on 80 percent of the offense’s snaps when healthy in 2018. Clearly, he isn’t at full strength just yet – which is why it made sense to bring Sowell back into the mix.
In order to make room for Sowell, the Bears waived running back Kerrith Whyte Jr. from the roster.
Chicago used a seventh-round pick on Whyte in last spring’s draft, and he did just enough in training camp and the preseason to make the season-opening roster. And yet, Whyte never made it into a game as he was left among the inactives in each of the first three games of the year. Whyte certainly showed that he had speed to burn as a prospect at Florida Atlantic, which could be reason enough for the Bears to bring him back to the practice squad if he clears waivers. But it is clear that Whyte has much growth to make before being a full-time contributor at the run-in back position at the NFL level.