The race to find a starting left tackle for the 2025 season is quickly becoming a grueling marathon for the Chicago Bears.
Chicago Bears general manager Ryan Poles deserves a ton of credit for the lengths he went to fix the interior of his offensive line, which included swinging a trade for 4-time All-Pro guard Joe Thuney. These additions helped skyrocket Chicago's offensive line to the Top 5 in PFF's rankings. However, the left tackle spot remains a glaring problem. Despite a three-way battle for the starting job all training camp, not one player has distanced himself from the pack.
The three-way battle briefly became a four-man slugfest when Theo Benedet, an undrafted rookie free agent from 2024, started getting starting left tackle reps, but rookie Ozzy Trapilo appears to have already lost the battle. Head coach Ben Johnson told the media that he believes that there is 'no doubt' that Trapilo looks better as a right tackle, and the snap counts from Chicago's week 2 preseason game confirms this.
As ESPN's Courtney Cronin noted, Trapilo played exclusively at right tackle in Sunday night's game. Now the starting left tackle spot is up to Benedet, second-year Kiran Amegadjie, and the entrenched veteran, Braxton Jones. Jones got the reps with the starters in the first two series of the game and had himself an up-and-down performance as he continues to recover from his 2024 season-ending leg injury.
Similarly, neither Benedet nor Amegadjie placed themselves clearly ahead of the other, leaving this a close race. Ben Johnson has said that he won't rush decision on his starting left tackle, but the Bears' season opener is just three weeks away. A big part of an effective offensive line is chemsitry between five players, which means they need as many reps together as they can get. Johnson may not want to rush the decision, but he's running out of time to get the five best guys maximum time together.
Hopefully, at some point during another week of practices and Chicago's final preseason game at Kansas City, one of these three will seize the starting spot and never look back, otherwise Johnson will have to make sure to give whoever his left tackle is plenty of blocking help this season.