Most of the moves the Chicago Bears made this offseason at least made logical sense. They traded D.J. Moore because they couldn’t afford his contract and had young receivers ready for more targets. Tremaine Edmunds was released for largely the same reason. Kevin Byard, Jaquan Brisker, and C.J. Gardner-Johnson were allowed to hit free agency because they lacked the speed Dennis Allen wanted in his secondary. However, one move received widespread surprise and confusion. That was the Bears trading Gervon Dexter to the Atlanta Falcons.
Now it’s true that the team was unlikely to sign the defensive tackle to a contract extension. It would likely be over their budget, and he wasn’t a natural fit for Dennis Allen’s scheme anyway. Still, he was second on their team last season with 6 sacks and 43 pressures. Wouldn’t you want to keep that around another year, even if you know he’s leaving in free agency? The Bears didn’t like that idea. So they flipped him to Atlanta for cornerback Clark Phillips and a 5th round pick.
Three games into the season, and it looks like that was a regrettable decision.
Gervon Dexter is on pace for his best season.
Not only does he have 1 sack and 14 pressures in three games with the Falcons, but his 23.3 pass rush win percentage is the 4th-highest among all defensive linemen in the NFL. That is ahead of Maxx Crosby and even Dallas Turner. By contrast, the Bears’ defensive tackle unit has 7 pressures and 1 sack total in two games. That isn’t a great look, especially after Allen championed the team’s newfound depth at the position. Maybe part of the problem is giving Jordan Van Den Berg, your explosive new rookie, only 14 snaps. Or maybe it’s focusing too much on scheme fit and not enough on proven production.
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Either way, Gervon Dexter is surging toward a significant payday next spring. Atlanta is projected to have more than $114 million in cap space. They are well-prepared to pay it. Based on what we’ve seen so far, Dexter is a key component to that Falcons defensive front—an ingredient they were missing. While the Bears do rank 5th overall in total pressures, they’ve mostly done so via the blitz. It is worth wondering how much better it might have been had they hung onto Dexter.
There is no time left for regrets.
The team clearly felt it had valid reasons for the change. Allen must’ve felt that he needed a specific type of defensive tackle to run his system properly. Still, it is hard to understand unloading good players when they helped you win the year before. Dexter did more than enough in 2025 to justify another season. Alas, the business of the NFL always gets in the way eventually. The Bears felt they had one of two avenues. Let Dexter play out his contract, or move him immediately for the best possible return.
They chose the latter.
It isn’t the first time a team has done this. It won’t be the last. The unfortunate truth is that the move doesn’t always yield positive results. Several teams likely wish they had just kept the player instead. Whether the Bears get a favorable return from this trade depends on whether the front office can get something from the 5th-round pick they received. That might be asking too much, considering Dexter was a 2nd round pick himself.
