Chicago Bears training camp: Which notable players might not survive roster cuts?

3. Hroniss Grasu

When I saw Grasu last year at training camp, he looked primed to take over as the team’s center of the future. Then, he promptly injured his ACL and went on I.R. for the remainder of the season.

Now, due to Cody Whitehair‘s emergence and his own lack of positional versatility, Grasu might be the odd man out on the offensive line depth chart.

The Skinny

A third-round pick in the 2015 draft class, Grasu had an up-and-down season after taking over for the injured Will Montgomery. While displaying the athleticism and quickness he showed at Oregon, he lacked the functional strength to excel in the NFL.

Then, when he seemed to have righted that issue, injury struck, and Whitehair took his place. Unfortunately for Grasu, Whitehair has one of the best seasons a rookie center as ever had. No, really. With Whitehair’s position solidified, Grasu’s is now up in the air.

The other issue, too, is that the Bears see him exclusively as a center, seemingly excluding playing him at guard. While that appears to make sense when looking at Grasu’s skill set, that doesn’t help his job prospects. With Eric Kush establishing himself as a reliable backup on the interior line, keeping Grasu might be a luxury the Bears decide they can’t afford.

With him being a third-round pick by this regime, maybe it’s premature to assume that they’d cut him loose so soon. But, assuming that Whitehair is entrenched as the Chicago Bears’ center, what else can we really expect?