Run game better with Jones
Just over a month ago Lovie Smith said he was content to go into the 2008 season with a running back corps led by rookie Matt Forte and backed up by Adrian Peterson and Garrett Wolfe.
The signing of veteran free agent Kevin Jones adds a former 1,000-yard rusher to the landscape, although he's not 100 percent yet and isn't expected to practice for a while.
Still, why the change in Smith's philosophy?
"A month ago I said I really liked our running back position," the Bears' coach said. "I thought we had the players that we thought we could win with. I say the same thing right now. You can just take this for the entire time I'm here: We'll always try to improve our ballclub, at any position. If a player becomes available, we'll look at him, and that's what happened with Kevin. I like the running back position more right now, and as far as our plans for Kevin, we'll just see where he is once we get him on the field and go from there."
Jones' availability remains a question mark seven months after surgery to repair a torn ACL in his right knee. He is confident he'll be ready to contribute by the start of the regular season, but the consensus seems to favor taking it slowly for now.
"There's a chance he won't be ready to go right away," Smith said. "We checked out his knee, and it's sound and all of that. I talked about the strength of that running back position. It is there, so we won't be in a hurry to rush him in there, but he eventually will help us."
Forget about it: Coach Lovie Smith says he hasn't even entertained the notion of Packers quarterback Brett Favre playing for the Bears.
"The only way I'm thinking about the Packers is them being one of the people that we try to beat each year," Smith said. "We like our quarterbacks. ... Brett Favre has been one of the all-time great players to play our game for a long period of time. I assume he'll play for the Packers this year. If not there, I assume somebody else, and I don't know who that is."
Not assuming anything: Dusty Dvoracek won the starting nose tackle job last season in training camp, but he suffered a season-ending knee injury in the first regular-season game. The plan is for him to once again start next to his former Oklahoma teammate and three-technique tackle Tommie Harris, but Dvoracek isn't taking anything for granted.
"I'm not here to make assumptions," Dvoracek said. "I'm just going to play hard and let the chips fall where they may. I did a good last year with that attitude, so I'm going to take the same one into this camp."