The Chicago Bears made five big moves over the space of the past week to overhaul their roster. They secured three new starting interior offensive linemen, a defensive end, and a defensive tackle. Combined, they will count $56.47 million against the salary cap this year, and all except guard Joe Thuney are under contract through 2027. He should be receiving a contract extension at some point in the near future. While necessary, GM Ryan Poles’ moves have all but swallowed up any viable cap space for the foreseeable future.
That would be a gigantic miscalculation. In truth, Poles and cap manager Matt Feinstein have not only kept the Bears enough under the cap in 2025 to handle any remaining business, but they’ve left the door wide open for future aggressive moves in 2026. Presuming there is another $10 million cap jump next year, the Bears are projected to have $67 million in space. That doesn’t even account for the multiple moves they could make to free up even more.
For example, by cutting or trading Tremaine Edmunds and D’Andre Swift, they would jump to over $90 million.
Ryan Poles has maintained his promise to protect the books.
He always said the team would be selective in free agency. They aren’t afraid to be aggressive but rarely throw away money unnecessarily. None of the contracts they’ve handed out over the past week can be called overpays. All were well within the projections of what those players would command, and some were even cheaper than expected. The Bears have more than enough space to extend Thuney, cornerback Kyler Gordon, and even left tackle Braxton Jones if that is the direction they choose to go. Even then, they’d still have wiggle room to go after a big name.
Subscribe to the BFR Youtube channel and ride shotgun with Dave and Ficky as they break down Bears football like nobody else.
There could be plenty to choose from in 2026. Standouts like Drake London, Jameson Williams, Tyler Smith, George Karlaftis, Aidan Hutchinson, Travon Walker, and Ikem Ekwonu will headline the group. Obviously, most of those big names will be retained by their current teams via extensions or the franchise tag. Still, two or three are bound to reach the open market. Ryan Poles has given the Bears an opportunity to remain on the attack.
@Dr. Melhus — The point of the coming 2025 NFL season, is not to prove that Ryan Poles is a good, or (when compared to any other NFL GM) a bad one… The point is to win football games — thereby making Bears GM, Ryan Poles a “SUCCESSFUL” NFL GM. Each successful NFL GM has only that one thing in common: His team wins NFL games. You and I likely will never agree in our assessment of Ryan Poles’ level of competence, nor the degree of his direct influence on the ultimate result. But, as NY Giant’s HC Bill Parcells… Read more »
@TGena You are so right. Howie Roseman is a genius in managing what he manages. The guy came up through the Eagles organization, builds winners. Whether it’s managing money, or managing people who manage players, he is aware of details. I agree with you about Ryan Poles being far inferior to the best GMs in the business, but I actually like seeing that Poles is changing, learning, sucking up his losses and trying to get the Bears in a position to win. Maybe he needed (as a rookie GM), a guy like Kevin Warren to back him up with the… Read more »
@Dr. Melhus Thanks for documenting another point in my argument! To tack onto what you’ve written here, losing both coordinators (and the focus those coordinators had on the position coaches, analysts and coordinators behind them), suddenly was a huge blow. Siriani and the Eagles didn’t take appropriate steps to hire enough coaches with varied experience and youth, to slot people in, after success. The Lions are about the experience a similar issue, except that Dan Campbell KNEW Ben Johnson would eventually leave, and he had a really good idea that Aaron Glenn was on his way out too. Campbell didn’t… Read more »
TGena: It’s not about excuses, it’s about reasons. Assuming the record is the sole provenance of the GM is just plain inaccurate. Let’s take your Eagles example. 2022: 14-3, lost Super Bowl to Chiefs 2023: 11-6, lost in wild card round to Bucs 2024: 14-3, won Super Bowl against Chiefs Now, if Roseman’s cap acumen and GM talent has them flying so high, why the dip in 2023? As someone who watched a lot of Eagles football, being in Philly, the reason is obvious. After 2022, Siriani (Eagles HC) lost both coordinators to HC jobs. In 2023 they hired on… Read more »
@Dr. Melhus — Bingo! If only your latest strawman (argument] had a brain — he could join Dorothy on the yellow brick road to Oz. Who said, Poles “is bad at it” when “it” comes to “keep[ing] the cap healthy”? I couldn’t care less about all the cap numbers — IF the team is winning. Those rules were put in place with the purpose (among others) of creating parity across the league. I simply point to Poles’ use of nearly all his allotted cap space, to produce the won-lost records of: 3-14, 7-10 and 5-12 — from 2022 thru 2024;… Read more »