LAKE FOREST, Ill. — The quickest way to elicit a grin from anyone on the Chicago Bears is to ask about Kalif Raymond.Mundane news conferences suddenly get a jolt of energy. Players tired from a long practice light up at the topic of “‘Lif,” the 5-foot-9, 32-year-old wide receiver and returner signed this past March.“Man, Kalif is amazing,” receiver Luther Burden III said this summer. “He’s really like a coach out there. He’s a great guy on and off the field. You can learn from him. His release package is sick. He’s a great guy and he’s out the roof. Kalif is a great leader for the team; he’s the guy, man.”Jahdae Walker, who might’ve been the presumed No. 3 receiver had the Bears not signed Raymond, was asked about competing with the veteran whom “everyone seems to love.”“Yeah, but I mean, I love Raymond, too,” he said.Coolest things we saw at Bengals-Bears joint practicePaul Dehner Jr. and Kevin FishbainHere’s a player who’s been with the team for only five months. He hasn’t had more than 300 yards receiving since 2023. But he’s established himself as a Hall of Famer in work ethic and vibes.“This guy is the most selfless player I’ve ever been around,” coach Ben Johnson told The Athletic.It’s Raymond’s third consecutive interview after practice in early August, and his energy hasn’t waned. He lights up at the potential of quarterback Caleb Williams, what it means to be part of this team and his reunion with Johnson.“I have such love, respect and admiration for Ben,” Raymond said, “so compliments from him and criticism from him mean twice as much to me just because I know who he is and I know where he’s coming from.”When Johnson was Detroit’s passing game coordinator in 2021, Raymond had 576 receiving yards and four touchdowns. He had 369 yards in the five previous seasons combined. Then, when Johnson took over as play caller in 2022, Raymond had 616 yards, followed by 489 in 2023.In training camp, he has been the recipient of some of the Bears’ most explosive plays, with his speed on display daily. This is someone whose signing may have been a bit of an afterthought as the No. 3 receiver in an offense that figures to use multiple tight ends often.But never doubt Kalif Raymond. His teammates have all marveled at his on-field abilities.“Just watching film on him every day, he just looks the same. You don’t know what he’s doing,” Burden said. “You don’t know if he’s snapping up (or) breaking in because he’s just running at you so fast and he’s so little.”For receiver Rome Odunze, it’s been the “nuance of things in his routes.”“He has the speed to run by folks, but he also has the craftiness to get in and out of breaks and veteran moves when it comes to the top of his routes and different things that we like to look at,” he said.No one can talk about Raymond’s skill set without mentioning his calling card: speed.“Fast, talking about gas,” quarterbacks coach J.T. Barrett said. “You got a burner and then with that, he’s going to be smart. He knows the different positions and where he’s supposed to be when you need him to be there. So that trust in order to let the ball go early and knowing he’s gonna be in the right spot, I think that means so much to the quarterback.”Kalif Raymond’s teammates say his impact extends beyond the playing field as he tries to help them avoid some of the NFL pitfalls that hurt him early in his career. (Kamil Krzaczynski / Imagn Images)We saw that in Cincinnati. Raymond was running a deep over route from right to left, and Williams floated a high-arcing pass to a spot, placing it right in the arms of his newest wideout.Raymond endeared himself to Williams in OTAs, not with his 22-mph burners but with how he lifted his quarterback after a rough practice.“I wasn’t having the best practice,” Williams said in June, “so I got really frustrated and Kalif came up to me and said, ‘Everybody is looking at you.’ That really resonated for me because that’s been something from my first year to now, I want to be as stoic as possible, good, bad or indifferent.”Later in that joint practice, he found Raymond for a touchdown in the corner of the end zone.“I know he’s a special player,” Williams said. “I’ve been on the opposite side of the ball from him, and I’ve seen him from the sideline and how explosive he is. Then being able to get him here and his knowledge is really important, one, for the wide receiver room, but him and I when we’re talking, we’re talking ball and talking about what we could’ve done here, what we could’ve done here.“When we get to the season, it’ll show up because those small moments, those small talks, that open communication that I always talk about is going to show up, and it always does.”Ask around about Raymond, and two traits come up often, and neither is catching a pass or returning a punt.“Blocking,” said guard Jonah Jackson, who played with Raymond in Detroit.Yes, the 5-9, 160-pounder can block.“He was special in space in punt return and catching the ball, but even more special when he was an insert on duo or plays where he had to go down and lay the hammer on a safety,” Jackson said. “That’s tough to do in Year 12. Some guys lose that ability to want to go block.”Raymond views his stature as an advantage and uses a basketball analogy to explain.“If somebody’s going for a layup, you’re on defense, if he’s 6-foot-4, you probably gonna move out of the way. But if he’s 5-8, you’re gonna try to block it and send it to the other side of the court, because he’s shorter,” he said. “So in my head, I think everybody’s looking at me like that. I’m like, ‘OK, that’s OK, but you don’t quit before I do because I’m about to throw my whole existence into you.'”Then there’s the clearout, a deep route that’s a decoy to stretch the defense deep. Raymond doesn’t just go through the motions when he’s asked to do it.Raymond puts himself in the shoes of the player running the dagger route or whoever is breaking across the field, more shallow than the clearout.“You’re not just running a clearout just to run,” Raymond said. “You are legitimately getting your guy open.”To Barrett, it’s a great example to the young receivers in the room.“It also teaches the young guys like, ‘Hey, this is part of being a receiver,'” he said. “Like, ‘Hey, it might not be my play on this one,’ but you see him raging down the field like that and be like, ‘Oh, we got to get this guy the ball because he’s helping his guys get open.'”And Raymond knows with Williams at quarterback, a simple “clearout” could suddenly become an option.“If he does decide to throw it and I’m on a clearout, you bet your butt I’m ready to catch it, just in case,” he said with a laugh. “The game’s about percentages, and it may be 1 percent, but 1 percent is enough for me.”Kalif Raymond thrived under Ben Johnson’s tutelage in Detroit, and the Bears are hoping for similar results now that they’re reunited in Chicago. (Nic Antaya / Getty Images)When the Bears drafted LSU wide receiver Zavion Thomas in the third round, a speedster who can return kicks, Johnson had a task for him.“We have a guy named Kalif. I want you to follow him around,” Johnson told him. “I want you to do everything that he does.”“So that’s what I’ve been doing,” Thomas said. “I’ve been staying on his hip.”Special teams coordinator Richard Hightower raved about his first meeting with Raymond, a two-time second-team All-Pro returner who still wanted to learn.“He came right to my office,” Hightower said, “and said, ‘Hey, Coach, I’m looking for the extra 1 percent. So how do we do JUGS here in pre-practice and post-practice? Can I get with the equipment guy? Can I talk to him about that? And I like to do a lot, a lot more, you know.'”Walker prides himself on getting to practice extra early to work with the JUGS machine and catch passes. Raymond does it before and after practice.But when Raymond goes above and beyond to get his reps in, he’s not doing it just for himself. He’s looking to be an example for his younger teammates.“He has zero ‘It’s about me,'” Johnson said. “It’s always about the team and how I can help. I think it’s easy to see that he’s different. He’s a special person.”Raymond credited the veterans he came across earlier in his career — Demaryius Thomas, Emmanuel Sanders, Jordan Norwood and Bennie Fowler in Denver; Odell Beckham Jr. in New York. He talks often about the “valleys” he went through earlier in his career and how he wants to help other players avoid them. And if he’s working to lift the likes of Odunze, Burden, Walker and Thomas, that just means the entire group is operating at a higher level.“At the end of the day,” Raymond said, “what you will have — if you do what you’re supposed to do — you will have a place for yourself, but also the team will be a lot better because you got guys that are growing at a faster rate because they didn’t have to go through those valleys that another guy did.“So it’s all-encompassing, man. It’s part of the game, and that’s why you love it.”It’s the ultimate dual threat. Raymond adds another dimension to the offense, and he does all the right things off the field that Johnson wants the rest of the team to emulate.“He doesn’t care if he catches five balls a game,” Johnson said. “That’s not what it’s about for him. He just loves the game. He loves being around good people, and we were so grateful that he wanted to come here. … And from what I’ve seen, he has a lot left in the tank.”