Bears' Luther Burden III flashes elite separation versus Kyler Gordon on TD catch

It's also what Burden showcased in Wednesday's practice for the first time since returning from injury earlier this week.

He got fantastic separation on his touchdown reception from quarterback Caleb Williams during an 11-on-11 session, as seen below. Burden beat nickel cornerback Kyler Gordon on the crossing route quickly, which opened up a nice window for Williams to easily throw a strike.

Yet, it's a still image during the play that really put an exclamation point on why fans should be most excited.

In the image:

• Williams, in the orange jersey in the middle, had just completed his throwing motion with his arm still extended and down.
• Burden (87), in the navy jersey on the right, is seen a split second after he catches the pass from Williams, right before he cuts up field to the end zone.
• Gordon, in the white jersey on the left side of the screen, is trailing in coverage.

Three things about this are notable:

1. Just look at the distance between Burden and Gordon. That's a full two or almost three-step difference.

2. It's the angle that Gordon is running at in the image which hints at how it happened. Gordon got caught with his weight shifted the wrong direction when Burden made one of his signature cuts and burst in the other direction. As Gordon was trying to quickly adjust, he started to lose his footing a bit which gave Burden the opportunity to get open and was rewarded by Williams with the target.

3. And most impressively, he did it against Kyler Gordon who is a Top 3 nickel cornerback in the NFL.

Just how great is Gordon, who the Bears recently extended with a three-year, $40 million deal making him the highest-paid slot cornerback in the NFL?

In 2024, Gordon played 365 snaps in nickel coverage, covering slot receivers on 67% of his total snaps.

Of the top nine nickel cornerbacks (listed in the table above), Gordon ranked:

• Third in Slot Havoc/100 with 8.30. This measures the defensive player’s ability to create disruptive plays when defending in the slot position, normalized per 100 snaps. Examples of havoc include preventing completions, forcing incompletions, generating pressures, and causing turnovers.

• Second in Target EPA/100 with -8.43. EPA stands for Expected Points Added. For the defense, negative numbers are better. It shows a defender who reduces the offense's scoring potential when targeted.

• First in Target Success Percentage with 49.1%. Lower scores are better here. It's the percentage of plays where the defensive player is targeted in coverage and the offense fails to gain enough yards towards a first down relative to that down (fails to gain 40% of yards required on first down, 60% on second down or 100% on third/fourth down).

Now, I realize this is a single rep in training camp in shells. No one should bank too much on what this projects for the season. Gordon hasn't suddenly fallen off because of one bad rep in July where he got beat. Burden hasn't even played a down in the NFL and has a great deal to prove as a rookie.

But as Gordon recently said at a press conference, "Practice execution becomes game-like reality." If Burden can play like he did on that rep in games, it gives Williams yet another dangerous weapon for defenses to try and cover in head coach Ben Johnson's new high-powered Bears offense.

Plus, it is more than okay to be excited when a fan sees something flash in camp that reminds them of why a particular player was drafted.

This type of move and separation was all over Burden's college tape at Missouri. Below is a handful of examples from his workout tape and how it showed up in games.

Here's also a very nice montage of cut up clips highlighting plenty more evidence of Burden's separation ability.

The other thing I'm grateful for is that Burden will be staring at Gordon across the line of scrimmage on slot reps whenever he practices with the first unit. Learning to be the best in the NFL is helped greatly when you have to face-off against one of the best in the NFL every practice.

This won't be the first time that Burden beats Gordon in practice. At the same time, there will be plenty of reps where it's Gordon who gets the best of Burden.

What a luxury Bears fans have in watching these two face off all training camp. A must-see matchup among many. And each will make the other even better. As Gordon also said in his press conference, "Iron sharpens iron."