BOURBONNAIS, Ill. — Ten things you need to know as Bears players arrived at Olivet Nazarene University Wednesday for training camp:

1. Kevin White will start camp on the PUP list. It didn’t take long to get our first surprise of training camp as Bears general manager Ryan Pace announced that the seventh overall pick in this year’s draft has a shin injury and won’t be ready for the team’s first practice Thursday.

Here’s the good news: The injury doesn’t seem serious and Pace said part of the issue that they told White to stay off the leg the past month and a half so he needs to get his cardio back to where it should be.

The bad news? I’m not sure I buy the whole “cardio” thing. If the shin was close to 100 percent and White just needed to get back into shape, they would probably have him on the practice field and just keep his work limited. White missed all of minicamp and will now miss valuable reps in training camp. He’s certainly talented enough to overcome an early hiccup, but he’s making a significant jump from West Virgina’s offense to the NFL and needs all the preseason practice he can get.

2. There was some very good injury news, however. While all three players will be limited in practice, Lamarr Houston (ACL), Willie Young (torn Achilles) and Jon Bostic (back) will all be on the field Thursday morning. It’s particularly surprising that Young is ready to go considering he tore his Achilles just over seven months ago.

Asked if all three players are expected to be full-go for the start of the regular season, head coach John Fox said: “That’s the plan. I think we had two guys, Chris Harris and Von Miller a year ago, both ended up having Pro Bowl years, that came off of ACLs. So I think we have a pretty good blueprint on how to do it.”

3. There was an obvious sense of relief in Bourbonnais Wednesday. Anytime a new coach comes in, players are going to talk about how things are different, but returning players like Kyle Long, Ryan Mundy, Jared Allen and Jay Cutler all voiced legitimate relief that last year is long gone.

“Last year sucked.” Allen said. “It wasn’t fun. It was miserable.”

After safety Ryan Mundy praised the new, positive work environment, he said: “It’s been well documented that that was an issue last year, but that was last year and we have an opportunity to right some of the things that weren’t good for us last year.”

Kyle Long added: “You can definitely tell that a lot of the walls that had been built for whatever reason in the locker room have been knocked down.”

“More than anything,” Cutler said, “I think guys like coming to work now and enjoy the process of what we’re trying to get done.”

This is a considerable difference from Marc Trestman’s first training camp in 2013, when multiple players voiced concerns about teammates “buying in.”

4. Jared Allen wants to “bust someone’s head open.” In the midst of describing how tough of a year 2014 was for him, Allen said, “In my mind I still think I’m the best at what I do. Last year sucked, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. There’s always circumstances around it but it is what it is and I’m ready to go out and bust someone’s head open, honestly. That’s the kind of year that I want to have. I want to have fun.”

Allen, who will be playing a new position in a new scheme for the first time in his career, sounded like a guy who has done some legitimate soul searching and admitted, “If I didn’t like what I was doing, I’d walk away.”

So does he have an idea of how much longer he’ll play?

“I’ve been on a one-year deal in my mind every year for like the last three years,” Allen said. “As long as I’m willing, the body’s willing and able, for me it’s more about am I willing to put the effort in to get it done? So you never know when it’s going to be done. I could break my neck tomorrow, nobody knows.”

5. Fox did not guarantee Allen a roster spot. When asked directly about it, Fox gave a generic answer, saying: “No matter what name you put on it, that is why we are here. It’s competitive. It’s a competitive business. We’ll create competitive situations and ultimately, you know, their performance will pick where they are on the depth chart and where they are on the roster, whether it’s practice squad, 53-man spot.”

That’s not to say Allen should be worried about his job security, especially if he’s in as good of shape as he claimed Wednesday. But it was an interesting answer from Fox, who was probably just taking the safe first-year approach of not guaranteeing anything to anybody, no matter how much credibility they’ve built up or how much money they are making.

6. Safety Ryan Mundy provided some fantastic insight as to how the secondary responsibilities are different in Vic Fangio’s defense:

“The coverage concepts, particularly in the secondary last year there was more spot drop zone, break on the quarterback thing and we really weren’t matching route concepts. This year we do match route concepts and nobody’s running free down the sideline or over the middle. Everyone has a responsibility. If someone’s running wide open, then that’s probably a breakdown because, like I said, we match routes.”

7. Jay Cutler said he wasn’t surprised that Tom Brady’s four-game suspension was upheld.

“I think the commissioner has set a precedent in the past that he’s going to uphold a lot of this stuff and he took no exception to this one,” he said.

Asked jokingly what his preferred PSI level is, Cutler said: “Uh, what’s the low end?”

8. Ryan Pace did not rule out giving players contract extensions during the season.

“I don’t ever want to put parameters on contract extensions so we’re constantly talking to agents throughout the year,” he said. “It will happen if it happens.”

That said, Pace has not been in a hurry to give extensions to players like Matt Forte and Alshon Jeffery, who are both entering the final year of their current deals, and he didn’t blink when tight end Martellus Bennett missed the entire voluntary portion of the offseason program because he wants a new deal.

9. David Fales will start the season on the non-football illness list. Pace said the illness is not serious, but the second-year quarterback who is competing to be Cutler’s backup will not be ready to practice Thursday.

10. Rookie offensive guard Chad Hamilton informed the Bears he will retire. Hamilton was an undrafted free agent out of Coastal Carolina and no further information was provided by the team.

Adam Hoge covers the Chicago Bears for WGN Radio and WGNRadio.com. He also co-hosts The Beat, weekends on 720 WGN. Follow him on Twitter at @AdamHoge.