Bears

Bears TE Sam Roush’s double-pancake block from his time at Stanford caught the eye of HC Ben Johnson ahead of the draft.

“He’s a finisher through the whistle, and I think that showed up on a consistent basis,” Johnson said of Roush, via The Athletic. “It didn’t matter who he was blocking — could be a big guy, could be a little DB, and he consistently finished through the whistle each and every play. You always love it when you take a player and you get a text message from somebody. One of his coaches at Stanford said he will crush himself to do whatever he can to help the football team. And it just verifies what you already thought about the player. So feel good about that one.”

“He is a very impressive young man,” Johnson added. “Obviously, you go to a school like that and take education seriously like he has, he’s very bright. I don’t think he’ll have any problem picking up the details with which we like to play.”

Roush noted that the first thing he did upon receiving his new playbook was to begin studying the formations.

“I’ve been told when you’re learning a new playbook, you want to start with formations and then you can kind of go into motions and shifts and learn all that,” Roush said after his first Bears practice. “With the formations there comes the splits. Once you get to that point, I learn the runs first and then the passing concepts. And then a lot of times with the run plays or the pass concepts, the splits will change. So you can learn those nuances after you’ve learned the base rules. But I think just kind of a ground-up approach is how you should do it.”

• ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler named Bears OT Darnell Wright among the next offensive tackles to watch for mega extensions at the position.

Packers

Packers sixth-round K Trey Smack was the first kicker off the board after setting a school record for most field goals of at least 50 yards. Green Bay ST coordinator Cam Achord explained Smack’s consistent ball flight that should help his kicks be more predictable in the tough elements at Lambeau later in the season.

“His ball doesn’t move a lot,” Achord said, via Ryan Wood of the Green Bay Press-Gazette. “I don’t need a guy who can kick it 65 yards, personally. I want the guy who is going to put it through consistently from 58, 55. Because we’re playing in Green Bay. We’re going to play in elements.”

“You’re not going to need the 60-yard ball all the time. You’re going to need the 45-yard ball with a 14-mph crosswind. So his ball not moving and stuff like that is definitely a big part for me.”

Vikings

• Per SI.com’s Albert Breer, the Vikings plan to regroup this week and map out the coming weeks to decide the next GM. They’ve worked through eight candidates thus far, with each interview lasting about an hour.
• Breer notes that Minnesota was just awarded the 2028 draft, and a large contingent is in Orlando for it. Additionally, there is no other GM opening, so they can be patient.