With veterans gone, now’s the time for Kyle Long to lead Bears

SHARE With veterans gone, now’s the time for Kyle Long to lead Bears
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The Bears’ Kyle Long is moving back to right guard this season. (AP)

In the last 14 months, Bears GM Ryan Pace has cut guard Matt Slauson, left tackle Jermon Bushrod and center Roberto Garza.

The three had combined to start 357 career games — 21 more than the Jacksonville Jaguars have played in their history.

So yes, there’s a leadership vacuum left on the offensive line.

The Bears have the perfect player to fill it: the one who went to college with center Hroniss Grasu, recommended new right tackle Bobby Massie to the Bears after training with him, and knows what new guard Cody Whitehair must be feeling.

One with three Pro Bowl berths, at least two years left with the team and the personality to connect with his teammates. And whose coach, John Fox, said he’d “take 11 of him all across the board.”

Kyle Long, though, is hesitant to say his leadership status is changing. He said the Bears are built on “horizontal leadership,” sharing duties rather than counting on a top-down structure.

“I don’t think that will be an issue, so I don’t really have to take on that much bigger of a role because of the guys that we have in our room,” Long said last week after organized team activities, which continue Wednesday at Halas Hall. “Everybody is kind of accountable themselves.”

Perhaps Long doesn’t want to make the mistake the Bulls’ Jimmy Butler did — to rub teammates the wrong way by declaring himself the alpha male in a press conference. Maybe he believes a strong coaching staff and a culture of personal responsibility makes such titles irrelevant.

But make no mistake: for the first time since the Bears drafted him in the first round in 2013, Long won’t have to defer to anyone in the room. He could join quarterback Jay Cutler as a captain, represent the offensive line on the Bears’ leadership council, or both.

This is his time to lead.

Not that he looks at it that way.

“I can hold somebody accountable, they’ll hold me accountable,” said Long, who’s moving back to right guard this season. “We don’t miss reps in the weight room. If something happens on the field, it’s covered immediately.

“You don’t hear a lot of screaming and shouting from coaches because they know the guys are going to be on one another.”

That includes veterans Manny Ramirez and Ted Larsen, who were signed this offseason but aren’t guaranteed to start.

Long knows the value of a strong veteran leader. He leaned on Slauson and Bushrod in their three seasons together, and said it was difficult to see Slauson leave last month.

He wasn’t the only one.

“It was a tough, emotional day when I found out they let him go,” Grasu said. “But he’s one heck of a guy, I’m always going to appreciate him.”

To new players, Long can be that veteran.

“Kyle just said give it your all every day,” said Whitehair, the second-round pick from Kansas State. “You know, this is a business. You’re trying to earn your job and just give it your all. Be a real man.”

For a unit that could have only one holdover starter at the same position this year — left tackle Charles Leno, Jr., — chemistry, and leadership, will come with time.

Long has already joked how different the job feels when you’re lined up opposite trash cans doubling as players, rather than the real thing.

“You talk to a lot of guys who have been on good teams before and they’ve said, ‘We didn’t really gel until the end of training camp,’ or, ‘It took us until training camp,’” Long said. “So there’s going to be some time to get some of the rust off from a technical standpoint, from a live football standpoint, but I think we’ll be all right.”

Follow me on Twitter @patrickfinley

Email: pfinley@suntimes.com

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