Windy City Gridiron
The Chicago Bears are making the wise choice.
After winning an epic game against the Cincinnati Bengals, some may call it a ridiculous game, but it was a great victory nevertheless.
What did that win over the Bengals tell us? First of all, it told us the Bears should be flirting with a playoff spot. It said to us that the culture continues to change at Halas Hall. The Chicago Bears believe in their coach, believe in each other, and think they’re going to win these types of games.
That kind of belief and confidence is critical for a team to become a true contending football team.
But what else did the Bengals game tell us? Get your tomatoes ready to toss my direction. It told us the Chicago Bears aren’t quite ready.
The Bears are improving almost every week. The Bears are buying in more and more every week. The Bears, because of all this, may make the playoffs this year, but the Bears are not ready to make a playoff run; they just aren’t good enough.
The Bears aren’t a complete team. Their defense can be beaten if it isn’t causing turnovers, their special teams clearly have holes, and their offense continues to improve, but isn’t a consistent unit.
Will they be ready to contend in 2026? Maybe. We will find out in 2026, but right now, let’s play this out. What is the Bears’ ceiling? If they win the division somehow, would they be higher than the 4 seed? Could you see them win three games against, let’s say, the Seattle Seahawks, the LA Rams, and the Philadelphia Eagles?
They aren’t fully ready for primetime.
That being said, trading premium draft capital for an expensive veteran is not what the Bears needed to do.
The Bengals wanted a first-round pick for Trey Hendrickson. The Bears were going to have to give up a 1, and give an extension to a 31-year-old Edge and pay him well over $30 million a year. The Bears aren’t going all in for 2025 and 2026; they are trying to build a sustained winner. That’s not how you do that.
Even trading for someone like Jermaine Johnson would have been questionable. The Jets wanted a 2nd round pick. Johnson has $14m guaranteed coming his way next year, and if you give up a 2nd round pick, you have to extend that player.
Johnson has 1 sack this year. He tore his Achilles tendon in 2024 and hasn’t been the same player this year as he was in 2023. Do you want to pay another Dayo Odeyingbo-type contract? Do you want to pay a player for what he could be, or if he’s not, you’re just saddled with a bad contract?
This was not the way for the Chicago Bears. How Ryan Poles and Ben Johnson handled the trade deadline was the right way to do it.
They landed a starting-caliber defensive back in CJ Gardner-Johnson, and they didn’t have to give up...
