Bears give Velus Jones Jr. the boot in the third round

It shouldn’t have been a shock because of his inactivity, but it was a result of his draft pedigree.

The Bears placed 2022 third-round pick Velus Jones Jr. on waivers on Friday.

At the same time, they also waived fullback Khari Blasingame.

Jones’ release will go down as a total failure by GM Ryan Poles in his first draft. At the time, the team needed a receiver to back up Justin Fields in the draft and with no first-rounder available, they selected cornerback Kyler Gordon and safety Jaquan Brisker and left the receiver position open until Round 3, at which point they took the best available player names and the player they wanted. who was regarded as such was Jones.

Jones’ failed to make an impact as a receiver and was a respectable kick returner, but fumbled the ball twice on punt returns and lost that job before his rookie season ended. The Krauts against Washington and the Giants paved the way for two losses.

This year, Jones seemed ideal for the new kick-return rules and muffed the kickoff in the opener, then kicked the ball himself while trying to reach down and retrieve it on the fly. It went to the Titans, and after that game, Jones never played for the Bears again.

After the mistake in the Bears’ season opener, special teams coordinator Richard Hightower was emotional Thursday as he spoke about what happened. Like he said, he wasn’t going to sugar coat it.

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‘The good thing is that I’m not very good at sugar-coating. I don’t sugar coat anything,” he said. “I actually spoke to the boy five minutes before I came in here, because we met by chance. But what happened in the match is unacceptable. We all know that. We value the ball and that’s why we don’t have a special game played and it hurt the football team.”

Jones always seemed like a favorite of Hightower and even the coaching staff because of his positive attitude and great physical abilities.

“Yes, I mean, honestly, as a human being, as a human being, I hurt for the child, I really do,” Hightower said. “But as a coach we have to evaluate all our options. And he knows that in the second leg the number one thing is to take care of the football.”

Jones averaged 26.7 yards on 39 kick returns over three seasons.

The Poles apparently received some questions about Jones before the end of training camp and on the latest episode of Hard Knocks he said he couldn’t even imagine giving up Jones for anything less than a fourth-round pick.

“I’m just trying to draw a line and say what I would do,” Poles told Matt Eberflus on the show. “For example, I would never go below 4. Is the value correct on paper? That is an incredible value.”

During training camp, they tried to recast him in a different role as a Cordarrelle Patterson-like running back/receiver also returning. He seemed to take on this role and had a team-high 158 yards on 25 carries with two touchdowns as a runner in the preseason, as well as 11 yards on two catches.

The experiment was a major theme in the HBO Hard Knocks series with the Bears, and by the end of camp, everything seemed to be going well for Jones. Then came the opener.

Jones had two runs of 11 yards in the opener, in addition to catching an 8-yard pass, but the special teams snafu ended this experiment. Jones was inactive during weeks 2-6.

He finished his Bears career with 19 rushing attempts for 165 yards and an average of 8.7 yards, and with 12 catches in 22 targets for 135 yards (11.3 yards per catch). He had one TD receiving and one rushing.

Without Jones, the Bears still have Tyler Scott and DeAndre Coleman as backup wide receivers behind the front three. This fuels speculation that they might make some sort of trade or selection move for a sixth, but they do have three wide receivers on the practice squad: Samori Toure, the former Packers receiver; Collin Johnson and John Jackson.

There had been speculation about Blasingame’s departure since the offseason because offensive coordinator Shane Waldron never used a fullback in his Seattle offense.

Blasingame was injured but has been healthy a few weeks into the season and has been inactive every week while they used backup center Doug Kramer as the lead blocker in short-yardage situations.

Twitter: BearsOnSI