Bear Digest

The common flaw in Bears offseason moves can set off alarms

Analysis: While the offseason moves earned rave reviews for the Bears, the fact they spent a lot of money and there still were potential flaws is itself cause for concern.
Gene Chamberlain|
Drew Dalman might be the closest to a flawless improvement the Bears made but even here there is a small worry.
Drew Dalman might be the closest to a flawless improvement the Bears made but even here there is a small worry. | Photo: Chicago Bears Video

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The Bears earned nearly universal praise for their work over the last three weeks in free agency.

Go right down the line and there's little or no criticism, with high grades offered up throughout for the moves they made. whether it was trading ahead of the start to free agency to avoid losing a chance at obtaining guards Joe Thuney and Jonah Jackson, or actually signing Drew Dalman, Dayo Odeyingbo, Grady Jarrett and Olamide Zaccheaus. They've done it all to applause.

It's accolades from NFL columnist Jeffri Chadiha saying they won free agency and it wasn't close, or colleague Kevin Patra including Ben Johnson's signing within this analysis, to the CBS team of Tyler Sullivan , Garrett Podell and Jordan Dajani seeing everything done with Caleb Williams in mind to USA Today's Nate Davis ranking them right with Baltimore as best overall and Pro Football Focus finding no flaws and even praising the signing of long snapper Scott Daly.

Yet, lingering in the shadows, even lurking to each and every move they made in the offseason is one central negative theme rarely discussed in critiques of the Ryan Poles-Ben Johnson work performed.

It is lightly identified or actually touched on a bit by one of the few grades given the Bears where they weren't put up on pedestals.

Tyler Brooke of The 33rd Team gave the Bears only a "B" grade for what they did. He found what they achieved as less positive than the following teams in the NFC alone: Cardinals, Panthers, Lions, Rams, Vikings, Giants, Buccaneers and Commanders.

Brooks worried that even though they identified their weaknesses in the trenches and took action to correct those, they took big swings with too much money in the process. And then he talked about flaws in a few of the moves.

While Brooke is acknowledging the positive, he's at least putting a finger on the negative.

The problem with his critique is he's looking at the trees too closely without seeing the forest.

There is one common denominator to this negative side of what the Bears did with their retooling project and it doesn't really require a magnifying glass for each pick. It's best summed up by one word: uncertainty.

Any team spending as much and giving up as much in draft capital should not have so high a degree of uncertainty surrounding so many of the acquisitions they made. There should be a stack of slam dunks, but that isn't the case with these Bears moves.

Sure, there are usually questions about many players brought in by teams in free agency. If they were entirely flawless, the teams they already played for should have probably bent over backwards to retain them but they obviously didn't.

However, in the case of every single Bears acquisition there is at least one basic, potential problem looming that could unravel the moves. Sometimes it's a similar flaw.

Perhaps only the signing of Dalman came the closest to a flawless maneuver. Dalman's overall grade among centers from Pro Football Focus put him fourth last year among all and it's tough to find fault there.

However, a huge Bears concern is keeping Caleb Williams protected and Dalman was only ranked 12th best center for pass blocking. That's still top half of the league, but a flaw nonetheless.

The rest of the moves all had major uncertainties attached. Jackson's lost 2024 season, the age of Thuney and Jarrett, the lack of proven success by inexperienced Odeyingbo all cause enough concern to go beyond the blemish label.

Giving up a fourth-round pick for Thuney when he might bolt after a year looks like a repeat of last year's Keenan Allen mistake.

The sixth-round pick for Jackson isn't much concern as sixth-round selections rarely amount to a lot and getting a starter in return is a real plus. However, paying as much as they did for Jackson against the cap in their future is an issue.

So many flaws leading to uncertainty overall against each of these players doesn't seem like the type of thing an "A" level offseason should be made of and, at least in this one analyst's grade, it isn't a perfect grade.

The flaws should be duly noted as the players set about preparing for offseason work that commences in mid-April.

Identifying needs and addressing them directly is always a positive, and perhaps everyone needs to realize all NFL players have faults. The Bears need to hope they've minimized those with these decisions.

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.