Bear Digest

The salary cap lesson for Bears GM Ryan Poles in this Super Bowl

Both the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles provide direction for the Chicago personnel boss, and if he needs more then coach Ben Johnson's last team provides it.
Gene Chamberlain|
Chiefs guard Trey Smith could be the prize free agent the Bears need but spending more for offensive line help regardless of who is necessary.
Chiefs guard Trey Smith could be the prize free agent the Bears need but spending more for offensive line help regardless of who is necessary. | Eric Hartline-Imagn Images

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Chicago Bears

There's a lesson to be learned for the Bears in this Super Bowl matchup but it's likely one Ryan Poles already knows.

Poles just hasn't executed it yet and three years have gone by when the Bears GM could have done it.

It's one plenty of Bears fans know already and it's based on something millions of people have known over the years in sports or otherwise.

The basis of it is simply that you get what you pay for, and the specific application here is that if you want to be successful in the NFL, what you need to pay for is an offensive line.

Of course you need a quarterback. No one with a poor quarterback wins a Super Bowl anymore unless you build a defense completely dominant and get lucky.

The wise thing to invest in once you have the quarterback is the offensive line.

Former Bears center Olin Kreutz has been saying this for years in media. He'll never call it their only problem but it's an obvious one and it doesn't take the keen eye of former Pro Bowl center to detect it.

The Chiefs rank second in the NFL in offensive line spending at $60.7 million according to Spotrac.com. It makes sense to protect the best quarterback in the league.

The Eagles are also a top-10 team in offensive line spending even after taking Jason Kelce's contract off the books in retirement. They are eighth at $43.5 million.

And the Bears?

In 2024, they were 28th in offensive line spending at $17.63 million. They ranked first in sacks allowed at 68 and fell from second to 28th in rushing and no one could figure out what happened.

Duh.

When the Eagles and Chiefs squared off in this game two years ago, the Eagles spent the third-most on offensive lines and the Chiefs spent the eighth most.

The Bears were a bit more penny wise back then about the offensive line. They were 22nd in O-line spending ($20.4 million) rather than 28th but were there because they had paid Cody Whitehair a huge contract eating up $12.3 million of cap space and the next year devoted even more cap space to him when Pro Football Focus graded him 119th out of 136 guards.

They also dumped $8.5 million of cap in 2022 into Riley Reiff for one year because of line deficiencies in talent and numbers.

You don't always get what you pay for an that's where assessing talent comes into play. The Falcons, Panthers and Colts ranked in the top six for offensive line spending last year, but their teams also had problems elsewhere, namely quarterback.

Poles' expertise is supposed to be offensive line. So he needs to get to work.

Guess who else ranked in the top 10 in offensive line spending last season?

Ben Johnson's Detroit Lions. They were seventh at $46.1 million.

When they made their big surge to the NFC championship game in 2023, they ranked No. 1 in the NFL in offensive line spending at $50.64 million.

Every Bears fan should be watching Chiefs guard Trey Smith in the Super Bowl in what could be his last game before entering free agency. Same for Eagles tackle-turned-guard Mekhi Becton, a likely free agent.

The Bears have the cash available, but spending it by trading for someone else's expensive unwanted wide receiver or signing another big-dollar wide receiver in free agency makes absolutely no sense.

The Chiefs, the Eagles and Johnson's Lions in the last two years prove this.

If the quality is deemed there in free agency, the Bears obviously need to move up the ranks in offensive line spending for 2025.

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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.