Bears Place TE Zach Miller On IR, Promote TE Ben Braunecker

The Chicago Bears announced that they’ve placed TE Zach Miller on injured reserve and promoted TE Ben Braunecker to their active roster on Tuesday.

  • The Bears signed TE Colin Thompson to their practice squad.

The Bears’ practice squad now consists of:

  1. OL Brandon Greene
  2. DL Rashaad Coward
  3. OL Cameron Lee
  4. WR Mario Alford
  5. NT Mike Purcell
  6. DB Doran Grant
  7. WR Darreus Rogers
  8. WR Nelson Spruce
  9. LB Jonathan Anderson
  10. TE Colin Thompson

Miller sustained a catastrophic injury that required emergency surgery to repair a torn popliteal artery and was just recently released from the hospital.

Miller, 33, is a former sixth-round pick of the Jaguars back in 2009. He signed on with the Bears in 2015 and returned to the team on a two-year, $5.5 million contract includes $3 million guaranteed last year.

Miller stands to make a base salary of $1.5 million this season and will be an unrestricted free agent in 2018.

In 2017, Miller appeared in eight games and caught 20 passes for 236 yards receiving and two touchdowns.

Braunecker, 23, wound up signing a three-year, $1.63 million contract with the Bears as an undrafted free agent out of Harvard back in May of last year. He was, unfortunately, unable to make the 53-man roster coming out of the preseason but was later signed to the Bears’ practice squad a few days later and eventually called up midseason.

The Bears once again elected to waive Braunecker at the start of the 2017 season and re-signed him to their practice squad after clearing waivers.

In 2016, Braunecker appeared in 13 games for the Bears and caught four passes for 41 yards receiving and no touchdowns.

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