Byron Pringle Tries to Push Past Troubles

No matter how fast someone is, it's never easy to outrun the past.

Bryon Pringle knows it. In another sense, the Bears also know it.

Pringle, of course, was arrested in April for reckless driving and driving with a revoked or suspended license in the offseason, while he had a child in his car. 

If it had been his only scrape with the law, certainly it would be easier to leave it behind in a few months. However, he had probation for a charge as a youth and then the incident when he drove someone to meet the seller of a iPad and the item was then snatched from the owner. Pringle wasn't prosecuted in this instance but did lose the chance to fulfill a scholarship with Youngstown State.

When Pringle faced the media for the first time since his arrest on the driving charges, he knew the questions were coming.

"Oh, I had talked to coach (Matt Eberflus), talked with (GM Ryan) Poles before it hit the media and everything's squared away in house. You know," Pringle said.

Asked about his thoughts on the incident, he said: "There ain't no thoughts on it."

Pringle acknowledged that being arrested about a month after signing probably didn't endear him to the fan base. He was given the chance to tell people what he wants them to know about himself.

"I'm just a hard-worker, man," he said. "I love the game. You know.

"Things happen."

They can't happen again like that or Pringle could have more problems than explaining the situation to media.

"I come here to play. They know I come here to play," Pringle said. "I'm coming to work hard. Ain't no excuses, no complaints, none of that."

Afterward, he seemed a bit less than penitent by tweeting: "I’m just here to play football not answer questions."

Eberflus appears ready to give him the benefit of the doubt for now and has seen how he could help the Bears as they try to outrun their own past—that of being an incompetent passing team. They remain the only NFL team without a 4,000-yard passer for a single season.

"I like him with the run after catch," Eberflus said. "He does a really good job and is an explosive athlete and I think he's strong.

"He's got a strong set of hands to catch it in traffic and he does a really good job, like I said, yards after catch. He can break some tackles, you can feel his strength, and you can see that on tape. We like where he is."

Pringle has been part of a great passing attack with one of the league's best passers, Patrick Mahomes. So at least he brings along that type of history along with the less positive stuff.

"It was great playing with Patrick, being able to learn and being able to have fun while I'm playing the game and know if I'm going to get the ball or not because we knew what was going on before it even happened, before the snap," Pringle said. "Like anywhere else, just go out there and have fun with it. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself and he always installed that in guys–guys coming off the practice squad, new guys coming in.

"Just go out and have fun. That was a big thing about Patrick."

Pringle, of course, has Justin Fields as quarterback and not Mahomes now.  He's also had to adjust to a different style of offense.

"It's new coming from the old club I was at but I love everything about it," Pringle said. "Being able to get a lot of one-on-one matches and move around a little bit and find spaces to get me the ball, you know."

The play-action Luke Getsy passing game, borrowed greatly from the Packers, will be trying to erase memory of Matt Nagy's failed passing game, Dowell Loggains' failed passing game and pretty much the failed passing game of every Bears team dating back to 1995 other than former head coach Marc Trestman. And it was the rest of Trestman's team that failed.

"Coming here, we ain't worried about the past," Pringle said. "We're trying to go forward, we're trying to go up. 

"We're not looking back at what happened in the past and, as a unit, we're trying to be better, hold each other accountable."

That's just one thing to be accountable for, and Pringle knows what the other one is.