Windy City Gridiron
Without checking, this might be the latest in the season I’ve done my first mock Bears offseason. It’s been for good reason, too: they’ve clinched a playoff spot with two games left to go in the 2025 regular season, and they’re 1.5 games ahead in first place in the NFC North.
It’s been a fantastic breakout season for the Bears in Ben Johnson’s first year as their head coach. They’ve gotten hot in two separate stretches, as they have both four-game and five-game winning streaks to their name so far this season. At 11-4, they’ve exceeded expectations and have restored winning football back to Chicago.
In addition to the more important task at hand of seeing how the Bears will do in the playoffs in their first appearance since 2020, I’m also interested in seeing how they’ll manage this coming offseason. The last remnants of their 2023 trade with the Panthers came through with the second-round pick that became Luther Burden III in 2025, and they don’t have much cap space to speak of. That will present general manager Ryan Poles an interesting challenge for how he approaches free agency.
I hardly consider myself a cap expert, so please bear with me. That said, I pride myself on my NFL Draft preparations, and having (nearly) weekly Bears tape breakdowns on my Patreon, I’m confident I have an understanding of what the Bears’ strengths and weaknesses are this season. With a limited amount of cap space to work with, I found it a fun challenge to create my first 2026 Bears mock offseason.
This article features plenty of salary cap manipulation, which is reflective of what Chicago will have to do this offseason. The numbers probably won’t be perfect, which is why I’ve given myself some wiggle room as far as how much cap space I need to be left standing with after my free agency signings.
I don’t have the Bears making a splash trade for someone like Myles Garrett or Maxx Crosby because of that lack of cap knowledge certainty, and I don’t have them signing Trey Hendrickson for that reason, either. That said, I think Chicago comes out looking solid after my 2026 mock offseason.
Existing cap space: $1.241 million
Going over the Bears’ existing contracts, there are only three players that really stand out as cut candidate to free up significant cap space: D’Andre Swift, Cole Kmet, and Tremaine Edmunds. Before this season started, I figured that at least two of them (particularly Swift...
