It’s not alarming at this point, and it’s just some light work in a voluntary minicamp, but brace yourself for a hard-to-take update on the Bears’ offense: It was a wreck Thursday.

The glitches, including interceptions by quarterback Justin Fields, were a reminder that even though the team believes it has made meaningful offensive upgrades, this will probably take a while to fix.

It didn’t bother coach Matt Eberflus much, and he emphasized that the goal is growth rather than results. Interceptions aren’t necessarily bad in April, he said, as long as they’re used as a springboard for improvement.

“As you watch this tape with your coaches, how can I grow and get better?” Eberflus said he told players after practice. “We have to do a great job of learning through those performances. That’s how you get better.

“It’s always a positive either way. Theoffense is gonna score a bunch of touchdowns against our defense during the coming months. It’s growth mindset. You’ve gotta learn from it. You’ve just gotta move forward.”

‘Vacay’ for Foles

It looks increasingly clear that Nick Foles will not be with the Bears this season.

Bears general manager Ryan Poles said last month the team signed backup quarterback Trevor Siemian because he’s “a better fit” than Foles and “hopefully” he can unload Foles in a trade.

Judging by Foles’ absence this week and Eberflus’ non-answer Thursday when asked if he’d prefer to have him practicing while he’s on the roster, it seems likely the Bears are set on moving on from him even if they can’t get something in return.

“I’m gonna defer that really to Ryan… That’s gonna be on those two guys to talk that through,” Eberflus said when asked what his plan is for Foles. “Every situation is where it is, and we’re just gonna leave it at that. Let them figure it out with agent, player, GM, and we’ll go from there.”

Foles, meanwhile, is having a fine time this week. He posted photos of him and his family at the beach in Santa Barbara, Calif., on social media with the caption, “Nothing like a family vacay.”

He’s on the Bears’ books for a $10.7 million salary-cap hit this season, and they’d save $3-4 million in space by cutting him.

Former general manager Ryan Pace traded a fourth-round pick to the Jaguars for Foles in 2020 and signed him to a three-year, $24 million deal. He played nine games in 2020 and one last season.

Teacher’s aid

The Bears’ signing of former Packers wide receiver Equanimeous St. Brown won’t make any of those grabby “Top 10 Offseason Moves” lists online, but he has already proven valuable as new coordinator Luke Getsy implements his offensive system.

Brown was with Getsy for four seasons in Green Bay and has been an ideal intermediary between him and the receivers.

“He’s helped pretty well,” Darnell Mooney said. “He brings in the same mindset that he had with Coach Getsy… They obviously talked a lot and they kind of clicked together.”

Tackle tryouts

The Bears brought in three veteran offensive tackles for tryouts: Caleb Benecoch (most recently with the Saints), Julie’n Davenport (Colts) and Trenton Scott (Panthers).

Each has played at least 36 NFL games, and Scott started five games for the Panthers last season.

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The Bears signed veterans at two positions of significant need Thursday. They added wide receiver David Moore and cornerback Greg Stroman, both of whom have bounced around the last few years.

Moore, 27, had decent seasons for the Seahawks in 2018 and ’20 and spent last season on the practice squad with the Raiders, Broncos and Packers.

Stroman, 26, was mostly a special teams player for the Commanders from 2018 through ’20 and had practice-squad stints with the Bills and Rams last season.

Cornerback was particularly problematic for the Bears last season, and they haven’t done anything to address it. Other than Jaylon Johnson, there are no certainties.

At wide receiver, Darnell Mooney is the top option and is coming off a 1,055-yard season, but there are question marks behind him.

Byron Pringle had just 25 catches over his first two seasons before breaking through for 42 receptions, 568 yards and five touchdowns with the Chiefs last season. Equanimeous St. Brown had nine catches in 13 games for the Packers last season.

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A former Chicago Public Schools teacher who was also well known in the city’s theater community admitted Thursday to having a sexual relationship with an underage student and was sentenced to probation.

Joel Ewing, 42, was initially charged with sexual assault, but took a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to a count of aggravated battery in a public place.

Cook County prosecutors said in court that the victim, now a woman in her mid-20s, accepted the agreement and prosecutors’ recommendation that Ewing be sentenced to probation and lose his teaching certification.

That Ewing would “never be able to teach again” was the most important thing to the victim, a courtroom advocate told the judge.

The woman read from a prepared victim impact statement in which she accused Ewing of lying to her, her school community and the theater community, said he had taken advantage of her age and body and shown he could not be trusted around children in a classroom setting.

“The fact is I will live with the consequences of his actions for the rest of my life,” she said.

Ewing’s defense attorney, Jonathan Brayman, told the judge that Ewing had been “cast out” of the city’s theater community after the allegations surfaced and was “racked with guilty and deeply remorseful for making this err in judgement.”

Ewing has since taken a job in sales, working for a company in Florida, his attorney said. He had also sought individual and couple’s counseling with his wife and taken an assessment that showed he was at low risk of ever committing a sexual offense in the future, the attorney said, noting that no other allegations against Ewing have been made.

Ewing spoke in a quiet voice during the hearing, barely audible in the courtroom’s gallery, but apologized to the woman after turning and searching for her with his eyes and said he hoped the court proceedings had brought her some closure.

Judge Steven Watkins sentenced Ewing to two years of probation and 30 hours of community service, but noted to Ewing that he would not have given that sentence without the victim’s OK.

The charge Ewing pleaded guilty to carries a possible prison term of 2-5 years, and Watkins noted it was rare for prosecutors to amend a sex charge to battery and recommend probation.

The judge warned Ewing that if he failed to comply with “a scintilla” of his probation requirements “in all likelihood you’re going to jail.”

The incidents occurred in 2015, when the woman was a 17-year-old student at Senn High School in Edgewater, where Ewing was employed as a teacher and the school’s theater director.

At the time he was charged, Ewing was involved in the city’s celebrated Steppenwolf Theater, and had been recently named artistic director of LiveWire Chicago. Ewing was also working as the the co-artistic director of the “youth-driven theatre company The Yard,” according to a bio on the TimeLine Theater Company’s website.

The victim outcried to a friend and later a therapist, who filed a police report against Ewing, but honored the victim’s wish that it be anonymous and the incident wasn’t investigated, prosecutors said.

Later, the victim filed her own police report because she was concerned that Ewing was still working with students.

The state’s Department of Children and Family Service was notified in January 2018 of the allegations, but apparently never alerted CPS officials, the Sun-Times previously reported.

Case workers typically”immediately contact” the school as part of their investigation, request personnel files, inquire about any other complaints against the accused individual and interview other students, a spokesman for the agency said at the time and acknowledged it was unlikely the agency followed those steps this case.

At the time, DCFS said they would investigate what went wrong and potentially refer the matter to the agency’s inspector general’s office. On Thursday, a spokesman did not respond to questions from a reporter about the findings of the investigation.

CPS officials said they weren’t notified of the allegations against Ewing until July 2019 and he was removed from his position.

But more than a month later, Senn Principal Mary Beck sent a note to parents stating Ewing left “to pursue a new opportunity” and said it was “bittersweet” he was leaving and said they were “excited” for for him as he embarked on a new endeavor.

The day after Ewing was formally charged, a CPS spokesman said the letter “was inappropriate to have characterized Mr. Ewing’s departure in such terms while an investigation was ongoing into the serious allegations against him.”

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LOS ANGELES –When Alex DeBrincat erupted for 41 goals in 2018-19, his second NHL season, he assumed it would become an annual occurrence.

A third-year slump compounded by bad luck, resulting just 18 goals in 70 games, sent his scoring confidence careening in the other direction. Then a global pandemic shortened his prolific fourth season, and despite scoring 32 goals in 52 games he didn’t have the runway to quite reach that plateau.

But finally on Wednesday night, at the end of game No. 77 of his fifth season — a 4-3 Blackhawks win over the Coyotes –DeBrincat reached the 40-goal milestone yet again, at last.

“It’s awesome,” he said. “Obviously I’ve had a lot of good players I’ve been playing with and [I give] a lot of credit to them [for] giving me a lot of backdoor tap-ins. But I don’t think you cherish it as much when it’s in your second season, and then you realize how hard it is to get back.”

After terrorizing opposing goaltenders most of the season, DeBrincat had strangely gone seven straight games without a goal entering Wednesday (although he had racked up eight assists over that span). Patrick Kane’s overtime cross-crease pass in overtime finally gave him a can’t-miss opportunity to end the drought — on his sixth shot on goal of the night — and he converted it.

“You obviously want to get to 40 as quickly as you can, but it seemed like I was a little bit snakebitten there, [although I] had a lot of chances pretty much every game,” he added. “It was bound to go in sooner or later.”

DeBrincat became the eighth player in franchise history to record multiple 40-goal seasons, matching Kane himself.

Entering Thursday’s matchup against the Kings, DeBrincat’s 40 goals were tied with Predators forward Matt Duchene for eighth-most in the NHL. He also ranked 14th in shots attempted (446), 14th in shots on goal (254) and ninth in scoring chances (284).

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Bears safety Eddie Jackson knows how last year looked. He saw it just as clearly as you did.

“Yeah, it wasn’t the best at all,” he said after Thursday’s final voluntary minicamp practice at Halas Hall. “I think that’s probably one of my worst seasons. I gave up too many deep balls. Just trying to eliminate that. The little things with your eyes, breaking on the ball, attention to details. Little things, little fixes that you could make.”

You could make a similar case for Jackson’s 2020 season, too. An opportunistic player that once embodied the Bears’ NFL-best defense turned into someone who struggled to make tackles and explosive plays.

Consider this: In the three years before Jackson signed a four-year, $58.4 million contract extension to stay with the Bears in January 2020, he had 15 takeaways — 10 interceptions and five fumble recoveries. In the two years since the contract extension: no interceptions, one fumble recovery.

Jackson is one of the last vestiges of the Bears’ dominant 2018 defense — he and linebacker Roquan Smith are the only two starters left on the roster.The man that drafted Jackson and signed him to his extension, former GM Ryan Pace, is gone, too. Jackson is the only member of Pace’s once-ballyhooed 2017 draft class still at Halas Hall. The safety might be playing somewhere else, too, butthe Bears would have had to pay $24.6 million in dead cap money had they released him this offseason.

Jackson can benefit from new head coach Matt Eberflus’ new defensive scheme, which, over the last four years in Indianapolis, produced the second-most turnovers in the NFL. If he doesn’t, Jackson might not be around longer. Jackson’s dead cap charge shrinks to $9.6 million next year; his new GM, Ryan Poles, doesn’t have the same attachment to him that Pace did.

Eberflus liked what he saw during the Bears’ three-day voluntary minicamp. For one, Jackson participated on two of three days –other veterans, like cornerback Jaylon Johnson and edge rusher Robert Quinn, didn’t practice at all.

“I can see it in [Jackson’s] attitude and his demeanor,” Eberflus said. “I could see it in his eyes when I talk to him –that he is energized and he sees it as a fresh start for him. I can see it in his practice, too, just the way he’s carrying himself. He’s been great in the meetings and he’s been great on the practice field.”

Jackson thinks Eberflus’ base Cover 2 scheme will help him keep the ball in his line of sight.

“It’s probably a lot simpler,” said Jackson, who is playing for his third coordinator in as many years. “It’s not too much ‘Eyes here, eyes there.’ You just see what’s in front of you and play. … Just seeing what’s … breaking in front of your eyes, not in 1,000 places.”

Now the Bears need him to make those plays. Pro Football Focus last year ranked him 66th among safeties — alarming, considering there are only 64 starters league-wide.

“That’s what I want to get back to, is, making those plays,” Jackson said. “That’s the biggest thing for me is, just go out there flying around and lead my guys. That’s by playing good, making plays and getting back to how you know you’re capable of playing.”

Jackson said he needs to control what he can. That includes his effort, execution and willingness to embrace the new defense.

“I’m going to do whatever it takes,” he said. “I’m willing to buy in. Whatever it takes. Whatever they ask of me, I’m willing to do it.”

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CLEVELAND — White Sox center fielder Luis Robert was removed from the team’s 6-3 loss to the Guardians Thursday afternoon after running out a ground ball in the eighth inning.

Robert appeared to tweak something after rapping a ground ball to shortstop.

Adam Haseley moved from left field to center to take Robert’s spot, and Danny Mendick entered the game in left in the bottom of the inning. There was no immediate word from the White Sox as to why Robert came out of the game.

Robert snapped an 0-for-21 slump by lining a 400-foot double off the top of the left-center field wall in the fourth inning and singled in the sixth. He was caught stealing after the base hit.

The Indians (7-5) completed a three-game sweep of the Sox (6-6), who have lost four straight after a 6-2 start.

Franmil Reyes homered against Dylan Cease, producing two of the four runs scored against the Sox starter. The Sox runs came on Yasmani Grandal’s sacrifice fly and a pair of Guardians errors in the seventh that pulled the Sox within 4-3 in the seventh.

The Guardians responded with two runs against Kendall Graveman in the bottom of the seventh.

Robert was on the injured list in 2021 from May 3 through Aug. 9 with a torn hip flexor, an injury sustained while running out a ground ball.

The Sox have been slammed with injuries this season, a list that includes pitchers Lance Lynn, Lucas Giolito, Garrett Crochet and Ryan Burr and position players Yoan Moncada, AJ Pollock, Josh Harrison and Eloy Jimenez.

Pollock (hamstring), an outfielder, is expected to rejoin the team Friday in Minneapolis. Giolito is expected to pitch Sunday after missing two starts. Harrison and Jimenez have dealt with minor injuries and are not on the IL.

The Sox lost their third in a row to the Guardians and fourth in a row overall.

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