Wide receiver Alshon Jeffery is on course to return from his four-game suspension for violating the NFL policy on performance-enhancing drugs against the Green Bay Packers. He is not looking backwards but in the wake of losses to Tennessee and Detroit that were in large part due to passes dropped by wide receivers, Jeffery is unequivocal:
“I want to say that I feel like if I was playing, some of those games we would have had a different outcome,” Jeffery said on Wednesday. “We probably would have won.”
In one respect, however, Jeffery is pointing the thumb, not fingers. Asked if he felt he had let the team down, “Most definitely,” he said.
Any evidence of hard feelings, however, was missing from a locker room that has maintained a collective focus through a dismal 3-10 season. Jeffery and quarterback Matt Barkley have put in extra time after practice, gaining familiarity with how the football comes out of the quarterback’s hand, and how the receiver comes out of his breaks.
“I think it was good to have him back, just a guy that’s been here the longest on offense now and knows what he’s doing,” Barkley said. “He’s running routes I’ve thrown before, so he’s not a completely foreign route-runner to me. It’s just some of the little things, getting used to putting it high on deep balls to where he can go up and get some of those deep balls or just how he does get in and out of some breaks on certain routes. It’s not all that foreign if he sticks to his depths [on routes] and what I’m used to. We should be good to go.”
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“Good to go” will carry another meaning into the upcoming offseason, when Jeffery projects to be out from under the one-year franchise tag the Bears placed on him last offseason after talks on a long-term deal stalemated.
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An overarching concern with Jeffery was his availability, coming off a season in which he’d missed practices and games with four separate injuries. Now the suspension could influence some teams, including the Bears, in deciding whether Jeffery can be counted on with a multi-year contract.
“When the season is over, and that’s not for another three weeks, you just evaluate the body of work,” said coach John Fox. “You then basically look at that and make decision on that body of work.”
Jeffery dismissed thoughts that this latest absence would affect his market. “Nah,” he said. “At the end of the day people are going to say what they’re going to say about you regardless. So whatever you [media] guys want to say about me, I’ll take it all in stride.”