Three-and-Out: Bears start rotating safeties vs. Vikings

Safety swap

The Bears defense featured a new wrinkle against the Minnesota Vikings. Rookie safety Brock Vereen replaced starter Ryan Mundy on some third downs in passing situations. The type of coverages didn’t seem to matter, with Vereen saying it was 50/50 split between man and zone.

“That’s part of the plan that we had for Brock to get his feet wet because he’s a good player,” Mundy said. “We could definitely use his skill set on the field. That’s just a plan that the coaches devised to get him some snaps and get him going.”

Faking them out

The Vikings longest play of the day was a fake. Safety Andrew Sendejo had a 48-yard run on a fake punt around the left end. It was run similar to a reverse with lead blockers as Sendejo took a handoff from receiver Adam Thielen, who initially handled the snap. Sendejo nearly scored, but he was tripped up by linebacker Christian Jones at the Bears’ 7.

“It feels great to overcome that type of stuff,” Bears special-teams leader Danny McCray said. “It was a play that they got us on. Our assignments as players probably weren’t where they should be.”

Punt return duties

As expected, kick returner Chris Williams handled punts with Santonio Holmes released. Williams had three punt returns for 17 yards and a fair catch. Williams did have a 16-yard punt return that was called back in the second quarter because of an illegal block plenty on Jones.