



Bears linebacker Jerrell Freeman sat at his locker, his eyes wide, his smile broad.



“People don’t know this,” he said, letting a few reporters into a team secret. “But [John] Timu might be one of the smartest people we have on our team.”



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“It’s good to have a guy like that beside you,” he said. “To have a guy like that on the practice squad? I trust him as soon as he lines up. I call him Shooter McGavin because he knows what to do and he’s going to shoot it. He’s going to shoot it faster than I will sometimes, you know what I mean? Because he recognizes stuff. He’s one of the smartest guys on the team.”



John Timu isn’t the biggest name on the Bears, literally or figuratively. No one knew or cared about the University of Washington product’s football intelligence before.



But the middle linebacker, along with a few...