Why Chicago Bears punter Tory Taylor has added to his skill set

"He's had a chance to really train—not train for the combine, not those type of things where you're always doing something in preparation for the draft. He's come back with a lot of different kicks and we're excited to work those throughout camp.”

It seemed like Taylor had a lot of different types of punts last year because of his skill at killing the ball inside the 10 or 15, or kicking it out of bounds in the coffin corner. His 34 punts downed inside the 20 ranked fourth in the league, but now he has added to the repertoire.

The other thing Taylor is doing well is helping the Bears choose their next punt returner. He's using this wider scope of punts to boot a wide range of punts to the return men vying for the job, players like Devin Duvernay, Olamide Zaccheaus, Maurice Alexander and Rome Odunze.

Earlier in camp it looked like Taylor was having trouble getting elevation on punts, but it was by design as he has been testing out all manner of punts to see how the playrs fielding them can handle all of them. Hightower is using this to decide who wins the return job.

"I tell you what, Tory's doing a phenomenal job challenging them,making it hard on them," Hightower said. "A lot of specialty kicks out there that he's worked on over the summer.

"So that's challenging a lot of our punt returners."

The Bears seemed like they barely scratched the surface with Taylor's skills last year.

The problem with seeing what else he's capable of is obvious—the Bears are giving up the football when he does it.

Considering Ben Johnson was used to coaching on a team with Jack Fox, the NFL's top punter, and the field position he provided, it would seem Taylor is going to need to show off every bit of those acquired skills to please his new coach.

The Lions offense when Johnson was in Detroit had the fourth, fifth and 11th best field position to start drives in his three years as coordinator. The Lions defense had the second, fourth and ninth-best field position to start drives in the same three years.

When Taylor came to the Bears in the same draft as Caleb Williams, the Bears QB joked they wouldn't be needing th new punter much.

Actually, they needed him a lot. If they get the offensive improvement they expect now, they'll like to complement it with a level of punting like Johnson had in Detroit.