Bear(ing) the News – A Chicago Bears Blog

Kevin Fishbain at The Athletic answers your questions:

If Tyrique Stevenson takes a step and the CB newcomers impress, would the team kick the tires on trying Terrell Smith at safety? A lot of decisions for the safety room have to be made soon, and he seems like he’s someone who needs to be on the field more. — John R.

Now, if you’re looking for potential trade chips — again, this is not a report, just summer speculating — you could look at these two players, especially if the Bears feel good about rookie Zah Frazier. This is a position of depth. This will be a pressure-packed season for Stevenson. He can get a new deal after 2025, and he’d love to be known for more than the Hail Mary in Washington. The talent is there, but can defensive coordinator Dennis Allen and defensive backs coach Al Harris get it consistently? Former defensive backs coach Jon Hoke often waxed poetic about Smith, whose main challenge has been staying healthy.

You’re right, John, that the Bears have some questions at safety in the future with both starters on expiring contracts and no one necessarily waiting in the wings. I’m always hesitant, however, to suggest a position change. Smith probably has the instincts to play safety, but it’s not a position he’s played in his football career — unless he did it before high school. Interestingly, when looking at Dane Brugler’s 2023 scouting report of Smith, he writes, “he has an intriguing blend of length, speed and physicality to match up with NFL receivers on the outside. He is a physical press-man corner prospect.” That would seemingly line up well with Allen’s defense.

Having Smith as the top backup at corner is a nice commodity, especially on his contract. But if the Bears feel really good about Frazier, then maybe it’s a discussion worth having. Until then, they’re probably better off with Smith at his usual spot.

I have a feeling that this discussion is centered upon the wrong cornerback when it comes to who will be on the roster in 2026.

A lot depends upon the kind of year that Stevenson has, but this might be a situation where some good drafting has put the Bears into the position of finally picking up a compensatory pick.

Players with Stevenson’s past aren’t always let go immediately. But eventually the team in question is faced with a choice and that choice is usually to let the problem child go.

Stevenson’s emotions might leave him wound too tight for the Bears to be able to depend on him long-term. Letting him walk and replacing him with Smith might bring very little change in terms of skill level, and especially if Frazier works out well, there could finally be the kind of depth at a position of strength to allow a player to leave for a reasonably expensive contract and be replaced with a cheaper option and a fourth-round pick.

Of course, this would also require the Bears to finally stop having to build their team through the free agent market at other positions. A huge assumption, but if they manage it, it would be a sign of health that we haven’t seen in Chicago in a long time and that we’ve never seen long-term.

With Stevenson’s past, he might need to have a lights-out season to interest the Bears in signing him with the players waiting in the wings behind him.

Safety is an issue with Kevin Byard, Jonathan Owens, Jaquan Brisker, and Elijah Hicks all in the final year of their contracts. Something tells me that GM Ryan Poles sees this position as one that can be filled easily with mid- to late-round picks and second-tier free agents. He certainly hasn’t been in any hurry to invest in the position. If so, presumably Allen is on board. So it will be interesting to see how he uses the talent he has at the position.

Sean Hammond at the Chicago Tribune answers questions after minicamp:

As the Bears head toward training camp, the biggest question facing Caleb Williams is _____?

Sean Hammond: How quickly he can become Ben Johnson’s star student.

Williams will be spending a lot of one-on-one time with Johnson. During minicamp, we saw the beginning stages of that relationship. There were mistakes. There were huddles that took way too long. Instances when the coach chewed out the quarterback for being late on a throw. Those things happen — and should happen — in the spring. Johnson demands a lot of his quarterback.

The question becomes how long Williams will need before he’s thinking like Johnson. Here’s a thought that Bears fans probably don’t want to hear: This probably will take time. If this looks ugly in September and October, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Johnson seems so detailed and so determined to build his offense and develop his quarterback the right way that he won’t cut corners to get immediate results in Week 1 or Week 2.

It wouldn’t be surprising if the 2025 Bears feel a lot like the 2022 Detroit Lions, who started 1-6 before winning eight of their last 10 to finish 9-8. The Lions didn’t hit their stride until midway through the season, but when they did, they looked like a juggernaut in the making.

The real question in my mind is, “Can he learn what he needs to know?” The question is, “Can he learn what he needs to know from the coaching staff as it’s currently composed?”

I’m not going to harp too much again about the lack of quarterback coaching experience on the staff except to say that I continue to have doubts about Johnson,Declan Doyle, andJ.T. Barrett, none of whom has spent any time as an NFL quarterback position coach. Passing game coordinator Press Taylor has but, though he is occasionally mentioned as being involved, I’m not sure how much and on what level he is.

The problem is, perhaps, elaborated by a situation where Johnson was yelling, “Faster! Faster!” at Williams as he ran a play while the media was present. All present were apparently impressed by Johnson’s intensity and his willingness to coach Williams hard. But is that really good coaching?

The thing is, anyone can yell, “Faster!” at a player. Heck, I can do that. I’m sure Johnson’s mentor, John Shoop, screamed things like that all the time when he was the Bears offensive coordinator in the early 2000s. His intensity was very high, just like Johnson’s, and he reputedly used to sit in the dark and watch film until his eyes would bleed.

And yet, Shoop ran the most miserable offense I’ve ever seen. The reason was because, though he could tell a player that he needed to process faster, he very evidently couldn’t tell players how to actually do it.

In contrast to Shoop, Johnson ran one of the most successful offenses in the NFL for three years running. But he did it with Jared Goff, a veteran quarterback who could respond to shouts of “Faster! Faster!” with little extra coaching. And what he did need could be provided by Mark Brunell, the Lions quarterback coach since 2021. Goff age and experience put him into a position to take advantage of Johnson’s schematic ideas and execute them with just that little bit of extra coaching that Johnson and Brunell could provide. That’s why he was a success. But is second year player Williams in the same position after a rookie year with what was almost universally acknowledged to be subpar coaching?

Yes, Williams’ success will be dependent upon his ability to learn. But, probably even more, it’s going to depend upon Johnson’s ability to teach. And we should all certainly be hopeful that his technique will consist of more than shouts of “Play better!”

Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune answers your questions:

Do the Bears plan to move Shemar Turner to the edge? Edge is a priority need despite everyone’s obsession with running backs. — @barbersquires

There may be a chance that Turner lines up at defensive end in occasional (see: rare) pass-rushing situations. I could see that happening once in a while. But Turner — whom the team lists at 6-3, 290 pounds — is a defensive tackle. If things go well, he will develop nicely behind Grady Jarrett and become a stalwart three-technique. Jarrett signed a three-year contract, but you’re essentially looking at a two-year, $30 million deal with a team option for 2027 for a 32-year-old entering his 11th season.

The Bears need to coach up Turner at tackle and let him develop there. Defensive end could be a position they look to supplement later this year — before training camp or potentially after roster cuts. There aren’t a lot of great options right now in terms of unemployed pass rushers.

I couldn’t agree more with this.

The Bears that went to the Super Bowl at the end of the 2006 season were never the same once Tommy Harris was lost to injury late in the year. Having one or more good three-technique tackles is critical to the performance of the kind of one-gap, penetrating defensive line that defensive coordinator Dennis Allen will usually run.

The Bears need pass rush. They don’t necessarily need it to come from defensive end. You can apply a lot of pressure on the quarterback from a three-technique, where the player has the shortest route to the quarterback.

I think that the Bears should see what Turner can do, and specifically how much pressure he can generate, at defensive tackle before they start moving him around.

Dan Wiederer at the Chicago Tribune gives fellow writer Sean Hammond his take on an issue related to how GMs handle their board during the draft. It’s a long response but a good one so I quoted it in full.

True or false? Ryan Poles’ goal to have the Bears big board speak to them during the draft was a grounded, sensible approach.

Wiederer: I’m all for practicality. I’m all for draft discipline. And I do think resisting temptation is the safest route to avoid forcing the issue at certain positions.
In this particular draft, the Bears board spoke loudly about the running back position in a way that pushed them in different directions and toward other positions over each of the three days.

But… (and you had to know there was a big “but” coming), it feels obligatory to point out that the pride every front office across the league feels about its draft board is at a minimum a display of overconfidence. It may even register as misguided.

After all, Sean, what can we say definitively above all else about the draft? It’s that the boards, in totality, are always wrong. Always.

Over time, that has been proven again and again and again — whether you’re a basement draft prognosticator or a veteran NFL GM. The prospect rankings are always off. And while we don’t know specifically how or where each board is flawed in the moment, we learn over time as highly drafted prospects underperform and fall out of the league and later-round underdogs become stars.

So why is it then that every NFL GM feels obligated to treat his draft board as an answer key rather than acknowledging it for what it really is — a best guess and rough estimate of how the talent evaluation team sizes up players.

That’s why I don’t pull the confetti poppers when GMs celebrate their marriage to the board. It’s why I’m a little skeptical of Poles’ oft-repeated goal in this draft of letting the board speak to him. As much potential as [second round pick Luther] Burden seems to have, did the Bears really need another wide receiver right now instead of finding, say, a starting left tackle, a dynamic running back, a talented edge rusher or a young safety? On Day 3, did they really need to make a dice roll on speedy linebacker Ruben Hyppolite II rather than address those aforementioned positions?

I’ll close with this. Listening to the draft board often feels prudent and reassuring. But we have proof that the Halas Hall draft board is often a fountain of lies.
In 2022, for example, the board steered Poles toward Velus Jones Jr. over Kerby Joseph, Nakobe Dean and Brian Robinson Jr. The next year it pointed to Zacch Pickens over Tank Dell and De’Von Achane.

In 2019, Riley Ridley was a had-to-have “best player available” when Dre Greenlaw, Andrew Van Ginkel and Charles Omenihu were on the board.

And by now, you certainly know the history of 2017, of Trubisky over Mahomes, of Shaheen over Kittle (and Mixon and Kamara and Kupp and Godwin and Hendrickson). So, yeah.

A couple thoughts here.

First, though he was far from perfect, I have always been a big fan of the way that former GM Jerry Angelo handled the draft. Angelo always said that you should never, ever fall completely in love with a player. There are no “must have’s” in the draft and its because of exactly the reasons that Wiederer points out. Its an imperfect process.

Former GM Ryan Pace‘s greatest flaw was that he thought that acting with “conviction” was the best way to handle player acquisition. Everyone was a “must-have,” and he overpaid for players that weren’t as good as he thought most of the time because of it. Trading up for Trubisky is a prime example.

Getting back to the present, I have generally had no problems with the way that Poles has handled the draft. But I’m not at all convinced that he stuck slavishly to his board. Word is that the Bears had Shemar Turner rated higher than Ozzy Trapilo but that the disappearance of the offensive tackles in front of them, especially Anthony Belton two spots ahead of them, convinced them to take the offensive tackle while they could still get one that they liked.

In this respect, I’m also looking at the pick of TE Colston Loveland instead of former Georgia defensive end Mykel Williams. The 49ers were glad to punce on Williams when the Bears didn’t take him. Via Michael David Smith at nbcsports.com.

San Francisco head coach Kyle Shanahan said GM John Lynch was trying to trade into the Top 10 to get Williams, but the 49ers’ offers were turned down.

“We had a good idea he was going earlier, and you don’t actually know. We thought about going up and John definitely attempted. . . . But they shot him down,” Shanahan said, via 49ers.com. “And so, we were ready to watch him go away and we were ready to go to our second and third, but he didn’t go where we thought he was going to go. Then we got to our pick and I was like, ‘I can’t believe you tried to trade there, of course he was coming [laughter].’ So that’s our thing about the draft, you never know. But we stuck there and waited for our guy and we got the guy we wanted.”

It’s possible that the Bears didn’t like Williams as much as the 49ers. But I think that few neutral observers would argue that they need the pass rusher far more than another tight end.

The Loveland pick smacks of the possibility that new Bears head coach Ben Johnson insisted that he get another Sam LaPorta for his offense, even though Williams, a defensive player, might have been the better pick.

In fairness, scouts will say that, though teams draft the “best available”, the best available tend to be at the positions that teams need because those needs are in the back of everyone’s minds as they evaluate the prospects. So it’s possible that Johnson’s desire for a tight end drove the player rankings.

Either way, no matter what Poles says, I don’t think that he slavishly followed a draft board where all of the prospects were fairly evaluated for talent.

Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune answers your questions:

Who is the starting left tackle Week 1? — @brendo120

That’s a real unknown and a question one would imagine the Bears hope to have an answer for before the preseason starts. Braxton Jones’ recovery from ankle surgery clouds the situation. If he’s ready to go at the start of training camp, he’s probably right in the mix.

One question the Bears have to answer — and there are a bunch — is how do they get their best five linemen on the field. If we agree that left guard Joe Thuney, center Drew Dalman, right guard Jonah Jackson and tackle Darnell Wright are four of their best five, it’s a little easier to play the guessing game. In that case, Jones, Kiran Amegadjie and maybe Wright are options at left tackle, with Wright and second-round pick Ozzy Trapilo the choices at right tackle.

Would the Bears be comfortable with Wright on the left side? He played some there at Tennessee but was primarily a right tackle in college, and the Bears drafted him to play on the right side. Is Trapilo potentially significantly better at right tackle than Jones or Amegadjie is at left tackle? In that scenario, perhaps Wright plays left tackle and Trapilo starts at right tackle. I don’t think Wright would be in his best position at left tackle, but maybe he’d take to it naturally.

That’s a long way of saying it’s premature to do anything but guess who will be the left tackle in Week 1.

It’s definitely premature. But thinking about these things in the offseason is one reason why the NFL is a 365-day-a-year sport.

I have to believe that the Bears had a plan when they drafted Trapilo. You don’t take a player in the second round unless you plan for him to start sooner rather than later. My gut tells me that he was drafted to play right tackle.

I’m going to leave Amegaji out of this since, like everyone else, I have no idea what to make of him. He was drafted in the third round, and it is evident he was taken based on traits. He was a boom or bust pick, and he probably still isn’t ready to start.

So that leaves, in an ideal world, Jones and Wright competing on the left. Again, I’ll point to the fact that they drafted Trapilo in the second round as evidence that the Bears feel that Wright might be the better choice. Otherwise, you don’t draft a replacement for him on the right side.

This reasoning all assumes that everyone, especially Trapilo, plays like Ryan Poles thinks they can play. But they play the games for a reason, and that certainly might not be the case. The odd man out here would be Jones, but I’ve never been as down on him as some other people have. With all of the improvements that they’ve made on the interior, if he’s your worst-case scenario at left tackle, I don’t think that you are doing that badly.

One of the Bears draft picks that has been criticized reasonably heavily was the selection of Ruben Hyppolite in the fourth round.

Hyppolite is a speedy but undersized linebacker, and my first thought was that he’d be a good special teams player and that’s why they picked him there. I’ve heard it suggested multiple times that he could have been drafted to play on the strong side, where the Bears currently have a hole in their roster. But in my opinion, that’s nonsense. At 236 pounds, Hyppolite would have to gain too much weight to make that a viable option.

However, a recent question in a Bears press conference to T.J. Edwards has made me rethink the idea a little bit (at 4:47). Edwards was asked about the possibility of moving to middle linebacker.

Question: [Defensive coordinator] Dennis Allen said that you would have an opportunity to play in the middle and sometimes outside backer. How do you view that opportunity this upcoming season?

T. J. Edwards: He’s definitely mentioned that and and just in terms of the way he’s installing is just teaching concepts. He wants everyone to understand everything so that we can go out there and play fast no matter who’s in in what spot which is something I think as a defense it helps you in the end, understanding kind of how the whole picture fits.

But to me I think I’ll kind of do whatever is asked of me. I played Mike most of my career and got here and played a little bit of Will, played a lot of Will, and got to understand that.

I understand the areas I need to be better at, understand the things I do well. So I’m pretty comfortable in both. I think [Tremaine Edmunds] and the rest of linebackers feel the same way. So I think for us, we’re just trying to learn in general kind of the whole concepts of the defense and then from there on out we’ll kind of figure out, I’m guessing, where we’ll play.

Edmunds has underperformed in the middle the last two years since coming to the Bears from Buffalo, where he also never played to his potential. It’s possible that, as suggested in the video clip, Edwards could move to the middle. That might put an undersized, speedy guy like Hyppolite at the weak-side linebacker spot with Edmunds, listed at 250 pounds, on the strong-side part-time when the Bears are in their base 4-3 defense.

Much has been made about what the Bears will do at left offensive tackle, and that is certainly the biggest mystery among Bears observers as the team works out during the offseason going into camp. I’ll have more to say about that in another post.

But I think this situation at linebacker bears watching. That strong side linebacker spot isn’t the most critical one on the field by any means. But they are going to need someone to step in there and play well the relatively small fraction of the time that they will be in base defense. And there’s no doubt that there’s room to improve in the middle full time.

Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune answers my question:

Joe Thuney has not been extended and is still on a one-year deal. Is it at all possible that the Bears will retain him for the year, groom someone younger behind him and try to use the compensation system to recoup their draft pick in 2027? — Tom S.

I suppose your scenario is possible, but I seriously doubt the Bears acquired Thuney with a plan to play him for only one season. Then what? Back to the drawing board for a starting spot on the line — assuming the other four starters play at the desired level and remain healthy? That doesn’t seem like a great plan to me, especially if the Bears wind up with Braxton Jones or Kiran Amegadjie at left tackle with the knowledge they’d have to reevaluate that position in 2026 if neither one takes a significant step forward. Now you’re talking about having to replace the left side of the line next March. We’ve seen that movie before, haven’t we?

If the Bears thought Thuney had only one season of high-level play remaining, they probably wouldn’t have made the move for him. In the event they are considering this as an option, you should know the highest compensatory draft pick they could receive for Thuney would be a fifth-round pick in 2027. The league caps comp picks at Round 5 for players with 10 or more years of service, and this will be Thuney’s 10th season.

My hunch is the Bears will look into a possible extension for Thuney. The fact one hasn’t been completed yet is neither surprising nor concerning. The front office has been busy with free agency and draft preparation. It takes two to get a deal done, so obviously Thuney would have to want to sign an extension.

I’m appreciative of the thoughtful response to this question.

I had no idea that the league caps the compensatory picks for players with 10 years of service or more. My assumption is that this is supposed to give more freedom of movement to players who have earned that right through long-term service.

Having said that, I still think this is a debatable point.

Yes, if you only keep Thuney for one year, you take the chance that you’re back where you started. But if I’m climbing into the mind of GM Ryan Poles (a scary thought), surely I’m thinking that sometime in the next two years I can find a young guard in the draft, right? Ultimately, isn’t that the goal? You’re always trying to get younger, and Thuney could be a progress blocker to a younger, cheaper prospect at a time when the Bears are thinking about extending QB Caleb Williams.

And let there be no doubt about it. They will be extending Williams almost no matter what the cost. The only real question will be whether he wants to stay in a dysfunctional organization that completely botched (at the very least) his first year of development.

Under those circumstances, how much cap space do you want to be tied up in your offensive guards?

I’m sure Thuney has a lot left in the tank. And I’d love to be able to see him in there for a few more years so that we could all just have one less position to worry about. If the Bears decide to go in that direction, it would be perfectly fine with me. But I’m not convinced that they think that they can afford it.