Source: Bears bring back safety Deon Bush on one-year deal

The Bears are bringing safety Deon Bush back on a one-year deal, a source confirmed to the Sun-Times on Wednesday.

Bush has started only eight games in five seasons with the team, but has emerged in recent years as one of the Bears’ better special teams players. He played 42.5 percent of the Bears’ special teams downs last year, the eighth-highest percentage on the team, despite suffering a foot injury in December. In November, he spent five days the league’s reserve/COVID-19 list because of contact tracing.

A fourth-round pick out of Miami in 2016, Bush has played behind veteran strong safety starters in each of the past three seasons: Adrian Amos, Ha Ha Clinton-Dix and, in 2020, Tashaun Gipson. Gipson, who became a free agent Wednesday, called Bush “a starting safety in this league” in October.

The league year — and the official start of free agency after two days of tampering — kicked off at 3 p.m. Wednesday.