When Cole Kmet immediately grabbed his knee after being tackled in last night’s game, I hoped he’d just taken an awkward hit and would walk it off, just as we’ve seen so often during his seven-year Chicago Bears career. Then the cart came out for him, and I hoped it would just be precautionary.
But then head coach Ben Johnson met the media after the game and didn’t seem optimistic, saying it didn’t look very good.
The Bears have yet to make an official statement, but according to Ian Rapoport, the NFL Insider for ESPN and NFL Network, Kmet is “believed to have suffered a serious, likely season-ending knee injury.” He added that Kmet will undergo more tests this morning and “until those results come back, there is no finality.”
I reached out to a source to corroborate Rapoport’s report and was told it’s believed to be a torn ACL.
“I don’t have the words to describe what Cole is to me, what Cole is to this team, to this organization,” Caleb Williams said about Kmet in his postgame press conference. “He’s the longest-tenured Bear, I believe. He’s been through it. So, it’s challenging; it’s tough. I’ll be right there with him through every step of whatever the injury is. Cole has been there for me every step of the way, through the first year, the second year, and now through this year. So, I can only do the same for him.”
Kmet, drafted with the 43rd overall pick in the 2020 draft, is the longest-tenured Bear, and having grown up in suburban Lake Barrington, Illinois, as a Bears fan, he’s had Navy and Orange in his blood his whole life.
Last month, Kmet wrote an article for The Player’s Tribune about his lifelong love of the Bears.
I just want to win games and represent for this city, and for this team that I’ve loved since way back when I got that badass Urlacher jersey for Christmas. I want to do all I can to help bring another Lombardi Trophy home to Chicago. And hopefully we can all join together to make that happen this season, because I’d love to see all of you on Michigan Avenue for a big parade this winter if everything goes our way.
Kmet did a lot of the little things on the football field to help the Bears win games, so his contributions will definitely be missed, but what he brings to the locker room as a team leader will be missed as well.