Reunited again, Bears linebackers Jack Sanborn, T.J. Edwards begin new chapter together
When Jack Sanborn showed up in Madison, Wisconsin, as a freshman in 2018, he was well aware of T.J. Edwards.
Edwards had been an All-American and a Butkus Award finalist as a junior in 2017. Everybody knew of Edwards.
“He was kind of the man,” Sanborn said.
Sanborn, who went to Lake Zurich, and Edwards, who went to Lakes, both played high school football for head coach Luke Mertens, who is now the coach at St. Patrick in Chicago. Before Sanborn left for college, Mertens made sure that Sanborn knew to seek out Edwards.
“Not only is he an upperclassman at Wisconsin, but he's just a really good person who will help teach you the ropes,” Mertens told Sanborn.
That's exactly what Sanborn did. He sought out Edwards and latched onto the senior.
Edwards chuckled Thursday when asked what Sanborn was like as a college freshman.
“Funny kid,” Edwards said. “Good kid. I've still got to call him a kid, just because I've known him for so long. To see his progression and how he's taken his game, I've watched damn near every snap last year when he was here, just to see how he was doing, and now it comes full circle.”
The two are teammates once again with the Bears. Edwards signed a three-year, $19.5 million free-agent contract with the Bears in March, reuniting the two suburban linebackers.
A year earlier, Sanborn signed with the Bears as an undrafted free agent. In a matter of months, Sanborn went from undrafted to making the 53-man roster to catapulting into the starting lineup after the team traded linebacker Roquan Smith.
His whirlwind season, unfortunately, ended early when Sanborn suffered an ankle injury in December. The 22-year-old spent the entire spring rehabbing the injury alongside injured teammates Darnell Mooney and Eddie Jackson.
Sanborn was cleared by team doctors this week, but has been reincorporated into practice slowly.
“I'm going to trust the training staff on that, when they actually give me the full go clear to do it,” Sanborn said. “Right now, we're in a little — just making sure we're OK. Doing a little ramp-up period.”
Sanborn returns to a linebacker unit that looks quite different with the additions of Edwards and Tremaine Edmunds. The Bears signed Edmunds to a four-year, $72 million contract in March, their biggest splash signing during free agency.
Sanborn is likely to play behind those two veterans. He will likely fill the third linebacker spot, which means he will be in the starting lineup in the base 4-3 defensive scheme, but he could come off the field frequently when the Bears want to add a fifth defensive back.
As he did five years ago at Wisconsin, Sanborn is once again trying to learn as much as he can from Edwards. He watched Edwards emerge from undrafted rookie to an indispensable linebacker on the NFC champion Eagles. Sanborn hopes to emulate Edwards' rise.
“He's a very instinctual player,” Sanborn said of Edwards. “I think that's kind of what you see about him is he's just a baller, and he's just a football guy, football player. He knows where the ball is. He's going to go to the ball, and he's going to hit it.
“I'm excited to see him do that again here.”
Now that the two are teammates again, Edwards can't help but laugh about all the nicknames he hears at Halas Hall for Sanborn. The Sandman and Jackhammer are two of his favorites.
Edwards believed he could tell that Sanborn would be a really good football player almost from the moment they met at Wisconsin.
“When he came in, I knew that there was something different about him,” Edwards said. “The way he was back in the day as a freshman, he could see the game. He understood the playbook from the start. He had really good football knowledge, and he could make a lot of plays.”
The Bears hope the two of them will be making a lot of plays in orange and blue this fall.