Kyle Monangai Details What’s Fueling the Bears’ Run Game Heading Into Year Two

Kyle Monangai spent the first week of Chicago Bears training camp on the sideline, not the practice field. A soft tissue injury kept the second-year running back out of action for three straight days, enough to raise real questions about a backfield that carried Chicago’s offense for long stretches of 2025. By Wednesday, Monangai wasn’t just back. He was talking like a player who has already locked in on his second season.

“The minor details are the difference between winning or losing a play,” Monangai told reporters at Halas Hall, according to the Chicago Bears’ official training camp report. “Execution is key and details are key to execution. That’s everything in our offense. Everybody’s part matters.”

It’s the kind of line that could have come out of Ben Johnson’s own mouth. The Bears’ second-year head coach has built a reputation, first in Detroit and now in Chicago, on obsessing over the small stuff in the run game. Monangai, a seventh-round pick a year ago, sounds like he’s absorbed that approach completely.

A Rookie Year That Outran His Draft Slot

Monangai’s words carry weight because of what he already did with them. He rushed for 783 yards and five touchdowns on 169 carries as a rookie, per the team, and he did it as the low man on the depth chart behind veteran D’Andre Swift. He and Swift, who ran for 1,087 yards and nine scores, were the only teammates in the league to each clear 750 rushing yards last season.

That production helped turn Chicago into one of the more dangerous ground games in football. The Bears finished third in the NFL in rushing yards per game at 144.5, trailing only a handful of teams and pacing an offense that carried the club deep into January. Running backs coach Zach Taylor connected the dots on Wednesday, crediting Monangai’s quiet, business-like approach from the moment he arrived as a Day 3 pick.

“That rookie class last year, those guys kind of put their head down and went to work,” Taylor said, per the Bears. “That was Kyle from the jump. You didn’t hear a lot from Kyle. He didn’t speak a whole lot, but he’s a guy that’s about the right stuff.”

Explaining the “Not Bland” Scheme

Monangai also gave a glimpse into why Chicago’s rushing attack was so hard to defend last season, pointing to the variety Johnson builds into his run calls.

“Our running game is not bland. I think everyone knows that. I think if you ask D-coordinators they’ll tell you that Ben Johnson’s run game is not bland and he’s going to come at you in different ways. We try to make things look similar and attack you in whatever way we see a weakness.”

That’s the core of Johnson’s run-scheme philosophy: dressing up different plays to look identical pre-snap, then attacking whatever soft spot a defense shows. It’s a big reason the Bears’ ground game produced explosive gains at a high rate last year, and why opposing defensive coordinators had to prepare for multiple looks out of the same formation rather than keying on one or two staple runs.

The Injury That Made This Week’s Comments Matter More

None of this was guaranteed to happen on schedule. Monangai missed three consecutive practices to open training camp with what Bears insider Patrick Finley and others described on X as an unexplained absence, stirring real concern among fans given how much the offense leans on him. Johnson eventually addressed it directly, telling reporters the recovery would be “day-by-day” and “on the shorter side,” according to SI’s Bear Digest.

Monangai was back in full pads for Chicago’s first padded practice of camp and worked his way into team drills shortly after, per the Chicago Sun-Times. His absence briefly opened the door for newcomer Salvon Ahmed to get extra second-team reps, a reminder of how quickly the pecking order behind Swift can shift if Monangai’s health becomes a lingering issue. It hasn’t been, at least not yet — and Wednesday’s session suggests he’s settling back into a full workload.

What It Means Going Forward

Caleb Williams’ development will likely set the ceiling on this offense in 2026. He’s the one whose growth, or lack of it, determines whether Chicago’s passing attack can match what the run game already proved it could do. But the floor runs through Swift and Monangai, and through a running backs room that Johnson has made a defining feature of his offense.

Monangai’s attention to detail, the same quality Taylor and Johnson have praised since he arrived as a seventh-round afterthought, is exactly what Chicago will need if it wants to replicate last year’s third-ranked rushing attack without missing a beat. The early camp scare is behind him. What he does with year two starts now.