Chicago Bears rookie outlook: Will Sam Roush bring a new element to the 3rd tight end role?

Sam Roush might become one of the Chicago Bears’ most important offensive acquisitions that you’ll hardly hear about during the season.

The third-round pick likely will have a complex role in coach Ben Johnson’s offense, at times playing alongside fellow tight ends Colston Loveland and Cole Kmet.

Here’s what to know about the rookie before training camp begins.

How did he get here?

Roush, out of Stanford, is a byproduct of the DJ Moore trade. As part of the deal with the Buffalo Bills, the Bears received a second-round pick, No. 60.

They flipped that pick to the Tennessee Titans on Day 2 of the draft in exchange for third- (No. 69) and fifth-round picks (No. 144, later traded to the Carolina Panthers).

The Bears spent the third-rounder on Roush, the second of three Day 2 picks.

Where did he come from?

To say Roush comes from an athletic background borders on understatement.

The Atlanta native’s father, Luke, played football at Duke, and his mother, Brooke, played volleyball at Montana State. Paternal uncle Mark Roush played football for Northwestern.

Several of Roush’s relatives played in the NFL, including maternal grandfather Phil Olsen and great uncles Orrin Olsen and Pro Football Hall of Famer Merlin Olsen.

“He passed away when I was about 6 years old,” Roush said of Merlin Olsen. “And then my grandpa is his brother. We spent a lot of time together. They grew up in Logan, Utah, and about 40 minutes away is a place called Bear Lake. We’d go to Bear Lake all the time and spend time with both of them.

“He was a great man. Somebody I look up to in my football journey.”

Meanwhile, Roush’s upbringing would rival cartoon adventurer Jonny Quest. The places he called home include Atlanta; Pleasanton, Calif.; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and Jakarta, Indonesia.

He played for Valley Christian in San Jose, Calif., but in 2021 he transferred to Nashville’s Lipscomb Academy for his senior season. Coached by former Super Bowl-winning quarterback Trent Dilfer, Roush helped Lipscomb win the Division II-AA state championship in Tennessee.

Why did the Bears draft him?

It mostly comes down to one term: 13 personnel.

Last season the Bears ran the fifth-highest percentage of plays using one running back and three tight ends. The formation gives the offense a lot of options while disguising its intentions to defenses.

Durham Smythe, who signed with the Baltimore Ravens in free agency, filled the third tight end role last season. The Bears may have added another element with Roush’s size (6-foot-5, 267 pounds), strength (25 bench-press reps of 225 pounds at the combine, tied for third among tight ends) and athleticism (88 score, third among tight ends, according to Next Gen Stats).

“I think if you ask Coach (Johnson), the more the merrier in that tight end room, right?” said Trey Koziol, senior director of player personnel. “The nice thing with Sam is that he’s got the versatility to play both in-line and off the ball.

“So now all of a sudden, you’ve got three versatile tight ends who can each do a little bit of everything. We always talk about adding competition to the room, but it really adds a lot of versatility into the offense.”

Koziol said Roush’s strength and football IQ could allow him to figure in the mix, even in 11 and 12 personnel.

“It gives you another option,” he said, “and it’s rare to find a tight end coming out of college that has the size and strength to hold up at the point of attack while also having the athleticism to be a threat in the pass game.”

What his coaches said

Stanford tight ends coach Nate Byham said Roush is naturally explosive.

“It really is his footwork in the run game, the power that he was able to generate,” Byham told the Tribune. “He has freakish numbers when it comes to his explosion and first step.”

While some of that ability came naturally, Roush still had to work on his footwork and other techniques. Byham said Roush showed a leap from sophomore to junior year and created better separation.

“(Roush) really focused on making sure we’re gaining ground with our first step in the run game and blocking,” Byham said, “but also gaining ground at the top of our routes, gaining ground on our releases and making sure that if we’re going to be really twitchy and powerful and explosive off the line, we use that to our advantage. We can’t have false steps, and he took that to heart and focused on that.”

Bears tight ends coach Jim Dray is a fellow Stanford alumnus, but that didn’t buy Roush any extra praise from Dray, who’s known for an economy of words.

“He’s smart, big, fast, strong and violent,” Dray said. “So it’s a pretty good combination of things that you’re looking for for the position.”

Roush called blocking “a huge part of my identity as a player.”

“He’s a finisher through the whistle, and that showed up on a consistent basis,” Johnson said. “It didn’t matter who he was blocking — could be a big guy, could be a little DB — he consistently finished through the whistle each and every play.”

Johnson and new offensive coordinator Press Taylor will spend training camp and the preseason modifying a system that ranked sixth in total offense last year with 369.5 yards per game. Taylor noted that while an uptick in 13 personnel has become a leaguewide trend — and the Bears followed suit last season — it doesn’t necessarily cement Roush’s role this year.

“Durham was a very experienced player that could do a lot of different things,” Taylor said of Smythe, who’s entering his ninth season. “We’ll figure out what Sam’s strengths are, how he complements those other tight ends, and then use as many tight ends or as many personnel groupings as we need to attack whatever defense we’re seeing that week.”

What he said

That said, Roush already can see where his bread is buttered.

“Chicago was top five in 12 and 13 personnel usage,” he said. “Obviously it’s an extremely talented tight end room. It’s something that is going to get talked about. But I’m going to come in and I’m going to compete. Iron sharpens iron.”

Roush said he loves what he has seen so far from the Bears playbook and its run-first approach, which aligns with his ability to run-block.

But he’s not just a bully but a brain.

Roush was a computer science major at Stanford, which would seem to establish common ground with Johnson, who earned degrees in mathematics and computer science at North Carolina.

“We haven’t gone down that road,” Johnson said. “Obviously you go to a school like (Stanford) and take education seriously like he has, he’s very bright.”

Roush said because Stanford is known for computer science, “I figured I might as well do that.” Asked if he ever worked on football analytics in the classroom, he laughed.

“I did a couple class projects,” he said. “Nothing super useful or insightful.”

But he did say his education has helped him process information. And it didn’t hurt that he had to quickly learn different offenses under Cardinal head coaches David Shaw, Troy Taylor and Frank Reich, a former NFL quarterback and head coach now serving as the New York Jets offensive coordinator.

“We were in a real prostyle, run-first offense with Coach Reich, and (I) loved that, a lot of play action,” Roush said. “I think it will translate really well.”

With regard to the Bears playbook, one thing stood out when he first cracked it open.

“Formations,” Roush said. “I’ve been told when you’re learning a new playbook, you want to start with formations, and then you can go into motions and shifts and learn all that. … You can learn those nuances after you’ve learned the base rules. But a ground-up approach is how you should do it.”

What he needs to prove during training camp

Roush will look to make himself indispensable in the overall scheme, whether that’s through blocking, route running or acting as a decoy. He isn’t just competing as a tight end, or even as a pass catcher, but with all of the playmakers on offense.

The Bears drew some scoffs by spending a valuable third-round pick on a third tight end, but that draft capital guarantees nothing.

It’s as simple as this: Do the Bears run better when you’re on the field? Do the Bears pass better when you’re on the field?

“Just (because) we drafted a tight end or we have a lot of tight ends on the roster, those guys are in competition with the other skill players, so I’m sure the other skill players feel that way,” Dray said. “So really nothing has changed (from last season) in that regard.

“The hope is that you can have some bigger packages, but guys like Sam and the other tight ends in the room, they’re going to have to go out and earn those spots through execution.”

To execute, that Stanford brain will be tested by how quickly it can grasp the complexities of Johnson’s offense.

“I just want to be on the field as much as I can,” Roush said. “Obviously I’m going to do whatever the coaches ask me. I’m just here to compete and I’d like to get on the field, and I’m willing to do that in any way possible.”