OL coach Juan Castillo to quarantine, will miss Panthers game

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Bears offensive line coach Juan Castillo will quarantine away from the team and miss Sunday's game against the Panthers, Matt Nagy announced on Wednesday. 

Castillo, who reported the interaction himself, hasn't tested positive, but he was recently in close contact with someone who had – which deems him as high-risk. Out of an abundance of caution, and based on guidance from the NFL and medical experts, the Bears decided to keep him away from the team through at least Sunday. Nagy wouldn't specify any further, but did note that Castillo's decision wasn't related to Badara Traore's case from late last week. 

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"These are the times that we're in right now," Nagy said. "There's not much you can do other than try to keep it at that, and I think now for us, these Zoom meetings that we're doing anything with some of the players because of our team situation, that's where we're at right now. We've just gotta adapt and adjust to all of that."

While Castillo has been present for those Zoom meetings, assistant OL coach Donovan Raiola will take over for him when it comes to on-field practices and gameday duties. As Insider JJ Stankevitz points out, Raiola was a graduate assistant at Notre Dame in 2015-2016, when Alex Bars played some games at left guard for the Fighting Irish. 

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"What a great opportunity for this week, for him to understand that hey, in the meetings, this is your room now while Juan’s gone ... " Nagy said. "Now, he’ll be down on the field and interacting with those guys. On game day situation, it’s next man up mentality on the coaching side and so this is an opportunity for him to grow and he did a helluva job today in installs, and I just thought it was fun to watch that happen. So, the guys have trust on him and now for us as a coaching staff, we gotta be able to help him out to help those players out." 

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