Tyson Bagent normally holds little back when talking about himself or football and continues in this manner even in a new coaching regime.
The backup Bears quarterback managed to fire back at the past coaching regime of Matt Eberflus in a manner more subdued than the criticism Caleb Williams with his film-watching comments in the coming Seth Wickersham book, but still communicated clearly how he felt during an interview in a place where he might be expected to hold back a bit—the Bears' website.
Talking with the Bears broadcast team of Jeff Joniak and Tom Thayer on the Bears Etc. podcast, Bagent had no problem marveling at the improvement in coaching he's getting.
"I think every staff has been pretty exceptional since I've been here but I would say there were some things where maybe I wasn't seeing eye to eye with how they were operating or going about things," Bagent diplomatically put it about the Matt Eberflus-Shane Waldron-Thomas Brown grouping of last year.
His opinion of the direct approach taken by Ben Johnson and the Declan Doyle-Press Taylor-J.T. Barrett grouping is a bit different.
"This staff is really like looking at you in your face, like, 'hey when you're ready to roll, we got you dude,' and you're in the National Football League so that really, in my opinion, is how it should be ran. So I'm loving it so far."
The Williams criticism of the Eberflus-Waldron staff was twisted to say the Bears QB didn't have anyone on staff watching film with him when he was actually saying he wanted someone to provide insights so he could watch it more effectively on his own besides normal film review at Halas Hall.
None of this should suprise anyone because Bagent already spelled out more specifically how he felt he was coached differently by this group while making an appearance with Dave Kaplan.
Bagent's interview provided a few other fun tidbits not covered while he spoke with media at the end of minicamp. One was about the crazy birthday workouts he and friend Derek Gallagher have had. He had described these in the past, and it sounds like they decided to go easy on themselves this year after last year's birthday 5K workout that included a 1,000-meter burpee broad jump, 1,000-meter row, 1,000-meter backward sled drag, 1,000-meter sandbag run and 1000-meter backward run.
This year's workout was a 5-mile partner carry, or basically an alternating piggyback run. One carried the other and then they alternated for 5 miles. They did it in under an hour.
Another Bagent description regarding his offseason preparation regarded his own workouts.
It seems he's targeting is arm strength.
"I got a good routine," he told Joniak and Thayer. "Got ahold of the weighted (foot)balls, which is the trendy quarterback thing now. And it's really made a difference in how my body feels after practice and how my arm and shoulder especially feels.
"Just kind of more zip on the ball. You know, you can't throw it far enough in this league."
The only real knock on Bagent since he came into the league as an undrafted Division II record setter was lack of elite NFL arm strength.
If he can improve this, and put it together with the better coaching he obviously believes he's receiving, maybe the Bears would need to get him after the season when he is eligible for restricted free agency.
At the very least, it could help in the coming training camp battle against Case Keenum.
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