In Week 11 of last season, tight end Adam Shaheen made the type of catch that the Bears always envisioned him making in the NFL after selecting him with the 45th overall pick in 2017.
On a two-point conversion attempt, he was sent out wide against Vikings All-Pro cornerback Xavier Rhodes and he beat him — easily — on a jump ball from quarterback Mitch Trubisky.
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It was a common throw but one that also was disguised by coach Matt Nagy through his use of Akiem Hicks and Roy Robertson-Harris. The defensive linemen and tight end Trey Burton shielded running back Tarik Cohen on the other side of the field. Shaheen was on an island against Rhodes.
But it also was a play that summed up Shaheen’s career to this point. He fell backward on his catch and his head snapped off the turf. He suffered a concussion.
It was Shaheen’s first game back after he missed the first nine after severely spraining his right ankle and foot in the preseason against the Broncos.
“My thing is being healthy,” Shaheen said. “If I’m healthy, I’m very confident in what I could do.”
But he never was last season. He missed one week because of his head injury, but his ankle and foot never felt right. He played hurt and didn’t produce much during the Bears’ late-season run.
“He still has a lot of development to do and can do it, and I think he knows he can do it, but in order to make those steps, he has to stay healthy,” tight ends coach Kevin Gilbride Jr. said.
“It’s not that he doesn’t want to do it, and it’s not that he’s not working at it, but it takes a while to be able to get your body into these positions to execute. So there is a lot of development still yet to be done, but in order for that to happen, he’s got to stay healthy.”
So how will Shaheen accomplish that?
Weeks spent learning Muay Thai and Jiu-Jitsu at Ronin Training Center in Columbus, Ohio taught Shaheen whom to be leery of when he was on the mat in combat.
“There’s some big guys in there,” he said. “But let me tell you, it’s the little ones that know what they’re doing. Those are the ones you’ve got to watch out for. Those guys are, ‘Whew.’”
But Shaheen wouldn’t take those “little ones” out. He wasn’t actually fighting.
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“It’s not like you’re fully getting out there and throwing kicks at people’s heads,” Shaheen said with a laugh. “You’re just having fun learning skills.”
For Shaheen, learning meant getting in shape in new and challenging ways, while also improving his once-injured ankle and foot. Ronin and their teachers proved to be an ideal fit for him this offseason. Shaheen said he was always interested in martial arts.
“When you go in, you do it and you have fun, hitting the bag and rolling with some people,” he said. “I liked it because it made me move my body in different ways. You’re all barefoot. So it was helping with the foot. You’re doing all kinds of stuff.”
From the team’s perspective, it’s a sign of Shaheen’s maturity. He’s doing what he can to find what works for him personally. He’s not the first player to turn to martial arts, but his efforts matter. This is his third NFL season; he knows he’s overdue to produce.
“I don’t think any of it ever hurts,” Gilbride said. “If you try to do too much at times, it can hurt. Sometimes you have to find the recipe for you and for your body. But he’s certainly taking all the appropriate steps. He’s trying his hardest to make sure that he’s getting his body where it needs to be physically.”
That means fewer trips to Chipotle for Shaheen, whose love for the chain was storied after his draft selection. He’s into “more healthy stuff,” he said. He lost seven pounds. Shaheen also started doing more prehabilitation exercises.
“He’s a leaner build right now,” Gilbride said. “We do need to keep his strength up, which is coming along. He’s healthy now, which even towards the end of last season, even though he was playing, he wasn’t all the way healthy. It’s good to see him out there running around the way he used to run around.
“Even though he got healthy through the course of the offseason, it takes a guy a few practices to really start getting your body back into the positions that your body has to get into to execute. Now he’s kind of rolling a little bit in that area.”
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Keeping it rolling has been Shaheen’s problem. But he doesn’t view himself as injury prone. He also suffered a chest injury making a touchdown catch in Week 14 of his rookie year against the Bengals. It was arguably his best game, too. He had four catches for 44 yards and his score.
“My injuries have not been normal,” he said. “They haven’t been like a pulled (hamstring) or an ACL or anything like that. It’s been some things that doctors haven’t seen in years.”
But they still happened. It’s why he has only 17 catches for 175 yards and four touchdowns in two seasons.
“Coming back from that injury, it was hard to run especially with the foot,” Shaheen said. “So it wasn’t all the best. I wasn’t in the best shape at the end of the last year. But I had to do what I had to do to help the team out.”
Shaheen won’t return to Muay Thai and Jiu-Jitsu during the NFL’s true offseason between minicamp and training camp. He described those workouts as an “offseason thing.” But Shaheen does feel that his training helped him physically, if not mentally.
“I think it was good for flexibility, as well as core strength,” Shaheen said. “The Jiu-Jitsu was good for that. It was just something else to do. Change it up. And that was on top of my workouts. It didn’t take away from any of that, either.”
On April 23, general manager Ryan Pace gave Shaheen the proverbial vote of confidence, and he did so just days before a draft that was widely thought to be rich in tight-end talent.
“We felt like he was playing very well last year, and then, unfortunately, he got hurt in the preseason,” Pace said. “We still feel his arrow’s up. He showed up to the offseason program in phenomenal shape. He’s still a young player. To answer your (a reporter’s) question, we’re still very confident in Shaheen.”
Pace then backed up his own words. Three tight ends went within the Bears’ striking distance in the draft: Josh Oliver (No. 69, Jaguars), Jace Sternberger (No. 75, Packers) and Kahale Warring (No. 86, Texans). Instead, Pace traded up 14 spots, from No. 87 to No. 73, to select running back David Montgomery.
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As a result, Shaheen has never been more important to the Bears’ future. Burton is recovering from sports hernia surgery, while Ben Braunecker is the only other tight end on the roster with NFL experience. After Braunecker, there are four undrafted free agents and tackle-turned-tight end Bradley Sowell.
The Bears always expected Shaheen to take time to acclimate himself to the NFL after playing at Division-II Ashland (Ohio), and they were OK with that. Given the time and the right coaching, Shaheen had immense potential in their evaluations. But he’s now in his third year.
“By no means (am I) a finished product,” he said. “But I also don’t think that the production over the last two years really shows how much I could help the team.”
As Pace said, Shaheen appeared to be on the right path last year around this time. He and Burton gave the Broncos all kinds of problems during their joint practices together in the preseason.
And then came the game …
“I really liked where he was at that point because he had been healthy through the spring,” Gilbride said. “He had been healthy all through training camp, and really had been making the strides that you wanted him to make. That was why it was so disappointing that he went down with the injury that he did. We knew even when he came back that he wasn’t going to be 100 percent healthy until this year.
“Do we still see the flashes? Certainly. They’re there. But again, the consistency needs to improve — and is improving — but he has to be able to stay healthy to achieve what we know he could achieve.”
Back in practices this offseason, Gilbride reminds Shaheen of what every rep means for him. No shortcuts and no bad habits. Do everything right. It’s his way of fueling Shaheen’s own desire to return to form and become an important player in the Bears’ offense.
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“That is something that I harp on a lot with him,” Gilbride said. “He’s very conscientious. You tell him, he listens and then he changes in a positive way. In order to be able to do that, you have to have a level of being humble, and you also have to have that desire. That’s how I know it’s there.”
It also was there when Shaheen was on the mat with his shoes off at Ronin. It’s time to play like a second-round pick.
“I’m trying to do everything under the sun possible so that at the end of the day that God forbid you get injured or something else happens, that I could look and say, ‘You know what? There wasn’t anything I didn’t do,’” Shaheen said. “But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
(Top photo: Robin Alam/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
