Ozzy Trapilo Injury Update: Bears’ Left Tackle Trending Ahead of Schedule Amid New Camp Concerns
The Bears needed some good injury news out of Lake Forest. On Sunday, they got a little, and it wasn’t from the guy currently penciled in as the starter.
Braxton Jones, the presumptive left tackle heading into 2026, left practice on the injury report, adding to what’s already been a rough camp up front for Chicago. But according to Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer, second-year tackle Ozzy Trapilo — who tore his patellar tendon in the Bears’ Wild Card win over Green Bay — “might be back sooner than expected.”
That’s a notable shift. Patellar tendon tears carry a 9-to-12-month recovery window, and head coach Ben Johnson said in April he wasn’t sure Trapilo would play at all in 2026. Breer’s update doesn’t attach a firm date, and it’s worth being straight about that: “sooner than expected” is Breer’s read on the situation, not a team announcement or a confirmed clearance to practice.
Do the Math on the Timeline
Here’s the part nobody’s spelling out. Trapilo got hurt in mid-January. Run the 9-to-12-month range forward and the low end lands in mid-October, the high end in January 2027. If Breer’s sourcing is right and Trapilo is actually trending toward the front of that window, the Bears could have him back around the time they’d otherwise be placing him on injured reserve to start the year and eating the mandatory four-game absence that comes with a PUP designation to open the season. That’s the practical stakes of “sooner than expected” — it’s the difference between Trapilo missing a third of the season or nearly all of it.
None of that is guaranteed. Knee injuries have a way of humbling optimistic timelines, and the Bears have said little publicly about where Trapilo actually stands in his rehab.
Jones’s Injury Adds Urgency
The Trapilo news lands at a strange moment because it’s Jones, not Trapilo, who’s supposed to be starting Week 1. Jones left Thursday’s practice after getting tangled up with edge rusher Austin Booker in one-on-ones, and by all accounts he wasn’t happy about it — he ripped his helmet off and threw it before heading inside. The severity hasn’t been made public, which the Bears haven’t clarified.
With Jones out, Kiran Amegadjie took first-team reps, and Jedrick Wills Jr. — signed in free agency after over a year away from football — remains in the mix as well. Neither has separated himself from the pack the way Jones had through the first two weeks of camp.
This is the part where I’ll say the quiet part: a left tackle competition this unsettled, five weeks out from the opener, isn’t where a team wants to be when its franchise quarterback is entering year three. Caleb Williams took real steps forward developmentally this offseason, by Breer’s account and others’, and that progress means less if the pass protection in front of him is a rotating cast of stopgaps.
What It Means for the Bears’ Offensive Line
Trapilo’s rookie tape backs up the urgency to get him back. Per PFF’s tracking, he allowed just two sacks and 15 pressures across 283 pass-blocking snaps last season while still learning the position — he converted from right tackle in college at Boston College because Darnell Wright already had the other side locked down. That’s a solid floor for a second-year player who started six regular-season games plus a playoff win before the injury.
If Trapilo can return by mid-season, even in a limited role, the Bears get a player with a higher ceiling than anyone currently in the left tackle rotation. Until then, it’s whoever wins the Jones-Amegadjie-Wills competition, complicated further now by Jones’s own uncertain timeline.
The Bears open the regular season Sept. 13. That’s the deadline that actually matters right now — not when Trapilo eventually returns, but who’s protecting Williams’ blindside when the games start counting.
