Patriots wide receiver Kendrick Bourne was benched on Sunday.

New England wanted to feature youth in its matchup with the Chicago Bears, which meant at least two wide receivers would have to accept reduced roles. Tyquan Thornton was an obvious candidate, but Bourne also ended up on the outside looking in with zero total snaps played.

K.J. Osborn surprisingly did get some run, playing a reduced role behind the likes of Ja’Lynn Polk, Kayshon Boutte and DeMario Douglas.

Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo explained the whole situation postgame, which reportedly was the plan coming into the game, while also commending one of his biggest leaders for the response.

“I’ll say this: even though Bourne didn’t play today, he was the first one smiling when I came into the locker room,” Mayo said, per team-provided video. “I’ve always appreciated that — just his energy and his excitement.

“It’s the same thing with K.J. and the rest of those guys; when they’re inactive, it’s the excitement for their teammates. We talk about ‘abundance versus scarcity’ and having the mindset of abundance where we can all eat. If you have that scarcity mindset, you don’t want your teammate to do well because there’s only a certain amount of the pie. I’ll say the mindset of this team is that if we go out there, there are enough plays for all of us.”

Osborn similarly was told he’d be benched before the Week 7 matchup with the Jacksonville Jaguars and made some headlines for his response to the entire ordeal after he ended up playing due to other issues in the receiver room.

Bourne was his typical happy-go-lucky self before, during and after what ended up being a dominant win at Soldier Field, however, which you could see from everything the club posted on social media.

It was a nice change of pace for New England.