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Rome Odunze injury update should have all Bears fans worried about his future in Chicago

Rome Odunze injury update should have all Bears fans worried about his future in Chicago originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

Chicago Bears star young wide receiver Rome Odunze has been dealing with a foot injury, a situation that's far from ideal for an offense looking to be one of the best in the NFL and needs a young guy who can make a major impact.

Unfortunately for the Bears, Odunze doesn't exactly sound very confident about how things stand, and that's a massive problem.

After selecting him in the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft, taking him ninth overall, the hope and expectation was that he was going to be one of the better players in the NFL at the wide receiver position, and he's proven he can be that.

However, when speaking about that foot injury, it doesn't sound like anything's going to change, and the Bears might have a bit of a problem on their hands now.

“This is my new normal. And it’s not from a standpoint that I’m always in pain, but the way my foot broke [there are] callouses in there that like creates a different type of foot structure with those bones — different types of things that kind of shift things around,” Odunze explained, per Courtney Cronin of ESPN.

“So my new normal was kind of what I am going into,” Odunze continued. “And I don’t think that’s anything that’s going to prohibit me from making plays, but I feel like with the break, it’s just like when you tear your [ACL]. It’s never really back to normal.”

While Odunze sounds like he's going to be able to work through this, and that's a promising sign, it's also far from ideal that he even has to deal with this at just 24 years old, after turning 24 at the beginning of June.

This is a young kid at the end of the day, and having him healthy for the next decade was definitely what the Bears were hoping for. As long as he can get on the field and be what we all expect him to be, it shouldn't be too big of an issue, but it's something to be mindful of long-term.