Professor

Daily Herald | Chicago Bears

excerpt:

BOURBONNAIS — “Entertaining,” and “preseason football game,” don’t usually wind up in the same sentence.

But it could be a different story for the Bears and their newly diverse offense tonight against the Houston Texans in the opener for both teams.

Rookie tight end Greg Olsen and cornerback-turned-wide receiver Devin Hester have thrilled visitors to the Bears’ training camp for two weeks. But a truer test of their ability to elevate the offense will come when the lights go on at Reliant Stadium for the 7 p.m. kickoff.

Starting quarterback Rex Grossman and the rest of the first team aren’t expected to play more than a quarter, but Olsen, Hester and rookie running back Garrett Wolfe could all get enough playing time to establish themselves as potential weapons during the regular season.

Nothing spectacular is expected of Grossman or the rest of the starters, but coaches will be interested to see a continuation of the sharpness that the offense has shown in camp.

“We’re just looking for him to go out and execute, run the offense, no different than what we looked for a year ago from him,” offensive coordinator Ron Turner said of Grossman. “Just go out and play like he’s practiced.”

“We just want to be sharp,” Grossman said. “We want to execute well, make good decisions as quarterbacks, step up, go to the right guy and (have) everyone running the right routes.”

That hasn’t been a problem for Olsen or Hester, and their immediate emergence as major players comes as no surprise to their former coach at Miami, Larry Coker, who was a visitor to Bears camp earlier in the week.

Coker applauded the move of Hester to offense, and it seemed that he regretted not pushing harder for the switch a few years ago.

“I think that’s a smart move,” Coker said. “It’s a move that we wanted to do, too. I think that’s his best position. The more he has the ball under his arm, the more explosive and exciting (he’ll be), and the more plays he’s going to make. It seems like he’s bought into it. That’s the key. If he buys into it, he’ll be good at it.

“He really wanted to play corner (at Miami), and we had to make sure he was in on the returns. Of course, he probably won four or five games for us just on returns.”

Olsen is the latest in an impressive lineage of Hurricanes tight ends, and it doesn’t seem as if it will take long for him to make an impact at the next level, like Bubba Franks, Jeremy Shockey and Kellen Winslow Jr. before him.

“He’s right there with them,” Coker said. “He’s smart, he’s tough, he loves to play football, and he is very, very talented. He’s a 4.5 (40-yard dash) guy and obviously has great hands. He will be as good as any of them.”

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