LAKE FOREST, Ill. – Veteran Bears assistant Ed Donatell took a light-hearted stance on the secondary’s lack of turnovers.

“It’s awesome because we can only get better,” Donatell joked with reporters on Tuesday.

In all seriousness, the defensive backfield's failure to generate a single turnover through six games is a problem. But Donatell is coaching several inexperienced players.

That is particularly true at safety, where undrafted Harold Jones-Quartey joined fellow rookie Adrian Amos in the starting lineup after veteran Antrel Rolle went down with a badly sprained ankle.

“For safeties there aren’t many teams that put two rookies back there,” Donatell said. “We’ve done it now for a couple of weeks and I feel good about what they’ve done.”

Donatell thinks Amos is a ‘rare’ first-year player. The 2015 fifth-round pick has been entrenched on the first-team since the second week of the preseason when he unseated Brock Vereen.

“Amos has been just so steady and mature beyond his years,” Donatell said. “He’s been that way 24/7 in everything that he does and in every meeting. He’s very calm. And you can see he was listening to Antrel. You can tell that when Antrel went out there wasn’t as big of a drop off in communication as there might have been. There was some drop off, but Amos is a real student of the game and very composed.”

Even newer to the program is Jones-Quartey, who the club claimed off waivers from Arizona prior to Week 1. A product of The University of Findlay in Ohio, Jones-Quartey jumped in at strong safety in Week 4 when Rolle got hurt. Outside of losing out to Calvin Johnson on a deep ball in overtime last week, Jones-Quartey has been solid in pass coverage and run support.

Donatell said assistant defensive backs coach Sam Garnes worked long hours to get Jones-Quartey up-to-speed.

“The first thing is I like to think that the players around him helped,” Donatell said. “I think when you come into an environment where the chemistry is good around you it helps you get up to speed. But he’s focused and football is very, very important to him. He’s just grown a lot in two weeks.”