Chicago Bears Rumors: Team has “plans” for Adam Shaheen

It sounds like the Chicago Bears want Adam Shaheen to stick around.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Chicago Bears made many of their coaches available to the media via zoom. Both quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo and offensive line coach Juan Castillo delivered some great comments and displayed their passion for the game. Bears Twitter could feel the excitement in their voices.

Then tight ends coach Clancy Barone threw a collective wet blanket on the entire situation with his comments regarding the much-maligned Adam Shaheen.

Perhaps the only comments that would have been more shocking and disappointing to Chicagoans are “Jim Boylen is the right man for the job.” However, a close second would most certainly be something like “Adam Shaheen has a bright future and we have plans for him in this offense.”

Welp — it turns out that is exactly hat Barone said during his Zoom interview. It’s extremely difficult to try to rationalize why the organization would feel this way. Since the end of last season, all signs have pointed to the Bears parting ways with the former second-round pick who has failed to live up to expectations.

Whether it was him essentially being a healthy scratch for nearly the last half of the season or the fact that the Bears are overloaded with tight ends and Shaheen seemed like one of the more logical choices to be released, most fans expected him to be released.

But now it seems like the organization has had a change of heart. Again, though, the question is why? What could Shaheen have possibly demonstrated over the last few months that have left Barone with the impression that he still has a bright future? Which of his 26 receptions over the last three years did it?

In three years he has taken 24, 15, and 16 percent of the snaps respectively. He has had great difficulty getting and staying on the field, but the reality is even when he has been, it’s not as if he’s flashed brilliance.

So it strains the imagination a bit to understand what plans the Bears could have for Shaheen next season that don’t involve using his salary on another player after he’s released. But we shall see.