Bears rookie diaries with Ruben Hyppolite II, Kyle Monangai | Week 4
As told to Gabby Hajduk

Bears fourth-round pick Ruben Hyppolite II — a linebacker from Maryland — and seventh-round pick Kyle Monangai — a running back from Rutgers — share their training camp experiences exclusively on ChicagoBears.com. This series will feature both players giving first-person accounts once a week throughout training camp.

There's just something different about a night game.

Everybody's watching. You're the only football game on TV at that time, so it's exciting. There's a different type of energy in the air.

And it's a reminder of what you looked forward to as a kid. For me, in middle school or high school, I remember staying up late to watch the games with your friends on Thursdays or Mondays or Sundays. It's exciting to have experienced that growing up and now, be a part of it.

We played the Bills Sunday night, a couple days after our joint practice with them, and I feel like all around, it was a good game for me. I had a couple tackles on defense and a couple tackles on special teams. My goal is to just be around the ball and make plays, and I feel like I did my job well.

I feel like I was really in my flow state in the game. I know I'm at that point when I go to the sideline after a series and don't fully remember what just happened. It's like you're so locked in on the moment and just playing freely that you can't fully talk about the game in-depth. My mind just moves to the next play, the next series or the next game so fast, but that's how I know I'm in the right headspace. It's just a next-play mentality.

What I'm really proud of is how I played on special teams. I got a great opportunity from HT (special teams coordinator Richard Hightower) to start on special teams during the preseason, and I'm really just trying to capitalize on that by doing my job, making plays and being special, no pun intended.

Special teams is where you earn your trust in the NFL. It's like a right of passage, especially for rookies, because your production there can lead to opportunities on defense which hopefully leads you to a starting role. I think it's the dependability piece that is so important. Special teams is such a critical part of the game and can be the points between winning or losing, so how you perform there shows how dependable you can be.

Aside from the NFL kickoff rules, there's not much different about special teams between college and the pros when it comes to how it's supposed to be played. I think the real difference is that for a lot of guys, rookies included, how you perform on special teams determines if you have a job, if you make the 53 or not. You don't get cut from a college team, so everything is amplified in the NFL in that way.

HT actually challenged me after the Dolphins game last week to be better on special teams, to make more of an impact. He was on my head in the team meeting and to the coaches. Even coach Johnson came up to me in the weight room last Monday and was like, "we need more from you on special teams." [Linebackers[ Coach [Richard] Smith said the same thing in our position meetings last week.

All the coaches care about special teams, which isn't always the case. A lot of coaches just focus on their side of the ball, but this coaching staff, they all care. And they were all on me.

I feel like I responded to the challenge well and I'm ready to keep making improvements in that area. I just really appreciate HT. He and I have a great relationship, and he holds me accountable, but it's all love.

We've got one more preseason game, so there's one more chance to make my impact felt before all eyes are on Week 1. I know I've been saying I don't think the fact that I'm in the NFL will hit me until after the season, but since Sunday night, I feel like that's changed. It's starting to hit me a bit with preseason coming to an end.

I've been trying to hold that feeling off, but I'm also not going to shy away from it.

Last week's joint practice with the Bills was great. I felt like I was having a great day. Came out strong, had a good team period and felt like I was just taking it one play at a time. EB (running backs coach Eric Bieniemy) always says the next play is the most important play and I was really playing with that mindset.

Then, I unfortunately had to leave and call it short with an injury. When I found out I wouldn't be able to play in Sunday night's game, I had a moment of disappointment. I was really excited about the Bills game. I felt like I had been trending in the right direction in terms of performing well and putting the right things on tape. But then it's like, you just have to deal with the cards you're dealt and find a way to respond.

So I've been really attacking rehab the past few days. That's what I've been focused on. It's gotten to the point where there's moments Dre (senior director of sports medicine and player health Andre Tucker) is telling me to calm down. It's just new to me — not being out there, just standing on the sideline and resting. So I've just been trying to attack what I can with the trainers and obviously stay locked in on what I can control.

For me, that started on the sidelines Sunday night. I was right next to EB the whole game, so I'd hear the play call and just played the game in my head. I would watch what the defense was doing pre-snap then watch whoever was at running back and just put myself in their shoes.

It was cool to see guys like Ian [Wheeler] and Brittain [Brown] do their thing. We were all hyping them up on the sideline when they got in the end zone. It's just great to see all their hard work come to fruition. Seeing the game from that perspective definitely gave me a new look at things, but I wanted to be the one playing.

What I really focused on throughout the game was practicing identifying the defenses — seeing what the linebackers were doing, what their disguises were and what I could've done in certain situations.

Recognizing and reading defenses is something I've really honed in on during camp. Obviously football is football, there's only so many ways to skin a cat, so the defensive schemes themselves aren't much different from college. What's different is the disguises. A defense in the NFL can appear to be playing Cover 1 or single-high man and then they'll buzz out real quick and roll to a Cover 2. And that happens in split seconds.

What really opened my eyes to that was going against Dennis Allen's defense. I realized real quick in camp that I needed to get that stuff down, because if the defense throws something new at me, I've got to be prepared to take it on.

I think what's so special about DA's defense is his aggressiveness. He's not afraid to call what he calls. Even Sunday night, there were two plays in the game where he called a Cover 0 blitz on a big-play down. Most defensive coordinators don't have the cojones to do that. So there's little instances like that where DA's mindset is just different. He's gonna get after you, so going against that in camp has made us all better.

As far as the meeting rooms, not much has changed aside from the fact that I'm not watching myself on tape anymore. I'm watching other guys, so I just have to put myself in their shoes and take in all of the coaching points. And then it's just preparing as if I'm playing. For Sunday, I still went over the call sheet, looked at the openers and evaluated what could possibly come up in-game that I needed to review. The only difference was I went out in sweats instead of my uniform.

I won't lie – it's hard. I can't say it's not. But it's just something where you've got to stay focused and make a real effort to not allow an injury to let you drift from what you need to do just because you can't physically do it. So the mental repetition of everything is how I stay locked in. And when I'm able to go, I'll be ready to go.