[Bears](https://chicago.suntimes.com/bears) safety Kevin Byard never imagined having a career like this.
He’s heading into his 10th season, been All-Pro twice and is on the verge of topping $75 million in earnings. And it’s equally stunning that not only has he never missed a game, but he hadn’t missed so much as a practice due to injury until back spasms kept him out of one last season.
He’s finishing another excellent training camp, and it’s hard to believe he’s 32 as he leads a secondary comprised mostly of teammates in their mid-20s. Byard has been all over the field and never looks tired.
“There’s never really an acclimation,” he told the Sun-Times. “I’m literally always in shape.”
His dedication to offseason training began as a survival skill and became a habit. Byard is past the stage of showing up to camp ready for action because he’s fighting for a job. He has maintained that approach because he’s aiming for something bigger.
Coming up with the Titans and then getting traded to the Eagles in 2023, Byard mostly has been on good teams. He’s been to the playoffs five times and made it as far as the AFC Championship Game. He signed a two-year deal with the Bears last year hoping he was getting in at the start of something special.
Last season certainly was special, but not in the way he was thinking.
The Bears began unraveling with the Fail Mary loss to the Commanders and never stopped until they were merely a 5-12 pile of yarn. They lost 10 in a row — Byard had lost 10 total games in a season just once — and it led to a complete house cleaning by the Bears as they fired coach Matt Eberflus.
“To put it short, it was miserable,” Byard said. “To be on a downhill slope of losing close games — it was pretty bad. We had good players, and to be constantly thinking, ‘Why are we not getting these things together?’ was frustrating. We had high expectations for ourselves and didn’t live up to them at all.”
The talent should’ve gotten them further, but, as Byard said, “A 12-5 roster can easily be 5-12. It’s all about the little things.”
The Bears sought to address that by hiring coach Ben Johnson and defensive coordinator Dennis Allen, who vowed to run a tighter ship than their predecessors. Players noticed the change immediately, and Byard called it “easily the toughest training camp” of his career.
“You see the practices, but going into the meeting rooms, there’s no slack for anybody about anything,” he said. “Everybody’s being held to the same standard, and I enjoy that because I know it’s needed.
“Nobody’s untouchable. If you’re not doing your job, you will get cussed out and put on notice. It’s definitely welcome in this building. We need it. We haven’t won here in a long time, so things have to change. And they’ve been drastically different.”
Byard has been an asset to Allen because of his credentials and authoritative voice in the locker room. Allen said younger players look to Byard for “what it takes to be successful,” and when Byard directs teammates, “It helps clarify what we’re trying to get accomplished.”
The change in tone at Halas Hall has been refreshing to Byard, who has high standards anyway. What he’s seeing now is probably very similar to how he’d run a team.
And combining that approach with a starting lineup that has Pro Bowl-caliber talent at all three levels of the defense should translate to success. But after last season’s letdown, “should” is meaningless.
“I love our chances, but 15-20 other teams are probably saying the same thing,” Byard said. “For us, it’s learning those lessons from last year. We have to, every single day, be on our stuff. We have to be mentally tougher than we were last year.”