The Chicago Bears have been remarkably quiet in the lead-up to the NFL draft. Nobody has a clue what they might be planning. While other teams have representatives scattered across the country evaluating players, the Bears have gone unmentioned. Their ability to stay out of the spotlight has been impressive, creating an air of mystery that has experts uncertain about their intentions. Currently, there is a tug of war going on between those who think they will take an edge rusher with the 25th pick, while others believe they will look to solve the left tackle spot once and for all.

Some believe the true hope for general manager Ryan Poles is to trade down, accumulating some extra picks to help the team fill out their depth chart and avoid reaching on somebody they may not be sure about. However, a select few think all this silence might be a cover for a bold move on the 23rd. They will trade, but it will be up to the board for what they hope will be a true difference-maker. However, insider Jonathan Jones of CBS Sports poured cold water on that possibility in his latest column.

Because this draft doesn’t have as much blue-chip talent as typical years, and because there is so much variance in what teams believe about these guys, I actually anticipate the middle of the first round to not have much trade activity…

…”In lesser drafts, the boards diverge even quicker,” said one source. If you’re, say, Carolina at 19, but you only have first-round grades on 15 players (that’s a guess, by the way), I would say the odds are very good that you’ll have multiple prospects with first-round grades still available when you select. 

I could see trade activity up high in this year’s draft — with the team trading out only going down a few slots — and down low. But the middle could see teams let the board come to them.

This simplifies things for the Chicago Bears.

While this doesn’t outright mean it won’t happen, it makes the likelihood far less. It is one thing for the Bears to be interested. The problem is you need another team involved to make a trade work. If nobody in the hot zone of where the Bears want to move up is keen on moving down, it doesn’t matter what you try. You’re stuck. That is the harsh reality of draft trades. Sometimes there just isn’t a market to make it happen. In such cases, the Bears have to accept reality and figure something else out.

They proved they could do that last year. They wanted desperately to move up for running back TreyVeyon Henderson in the 2nd round. Sadly, they couldn’t find a buyer. Henderson went to New England one pick before them. Rather than wallowing in depression over their lost chance, the team quickly pivoted to Luther Burden. That worked out well, and they still managed to land Kyle Monangai later in the draft. Things tend to go well for you, provided you don’t have your heart set on one outcome.

The outcome seems to have narrowed to three possibilities.

By far the most popular among fans, media, and some experts is that they’ll take the best defensive lineman on their board. Be it an edge rusher or defensive tackle, the Chicago Bears will look to give their defensive front some juice after a tough 2025. Next would be taking a left tackle. Ozzy Trapilo’s future is uncertain, and the team has no clear option they can bet on. The Bears have been actively scouting that position over the past few months, so it wouldn’t be shocking to see them go that route.

Then there is the trade down route. One must remember the Bears have no picks in the 5th and 6th rounds. They also gave up a future 5th for Garrett Bradbury. Poles may wish to recoup some of those losses by moving down. We already know Poles isn’t afraid to do this. He did it twice in 2023 when dropping from #1 to #10, and was in Kansas City when they did it in 2016. If he can find a team in the right landing zone that makes an acceptable offer, that feels like an option the Bears are looking for.

The entire Maxx Crosby saga was one of the strangest in recent memory. For years, the pass rusher has been the face of the Las Vegas Raiders. It felt like he might be on a Hall of Fame trajectory. Sadly, the Raiders haven’t been able to construct a winner in most of that time, leaving Crosby’s efforts unrewarded. As a result, the star defensive end requested a trade after the Raiders bottomed out with the league’s worst record last season. What followed was the kind of high-stakes chase you’d expect among NFL teams for players of his caliber.

Many wondered if the Chicago Bears were involved. It made sense. They badly needed a difference-making piece on their defensive line. Crosby was exactly that, and seemed to have a strong admiration for both quarterback Caleb Williams and head coach Ben Johnson. However, in the end, the Baltimore Ravens won the race, only to back out at the last second with a failed physical. Crosby returned to the Raiders and vowed to play this season with them. How close were the Bears in all of it? Dan Wiederer of The Athletic finally shared details.

While the Bears were linked to that Crosby storyline for weeks, with speculation swirling that they, too, had offered Las Vegas a pair of first-round picks, that wasn’t the case, a league source told The Athletic. Serious discussions were needed about Crosby’s age (28); the weight of his contract (salary-cap hits north of $35 million and $38 million over the next two seasons, respectively); and his health status (including meniscus repair surgery in January). And Poles has always prided himself on the guardrails he establishes for such situations.

The Bears ultimately retreated when it became clear the auction was heading well beyond their comfort zone.

Maxx Crosby just wasn’t worth the price tag.

It’s clear from this update that the Bears were indeed making a run at the star pass rusher. However, general manager Ryan Poles had set a red line he would not cross. It appears that when the price reached two 1st round picks, that was the signal to bow out. This isn’t a big surprise. Poles came from Kansas City. That team had never traded two 1sts for a veteran player during his time there, believing it was vital to protect the future. He’s operated that way since he took over the Bears.

However, it was more than that. As brilliant as Crosby is, he will be 29 years old this season, and he is coming off a pretty serious knee injury. Giving up two 1st round picks for a player like that means you better be almost certain it’s a final piece to a Super Bowl kind of move. The Bears were nowhere near that type of situation, especially after losing multiple starters from last year’s team to free agency and trades. This was one of those times where the Bears had to accept reality.

One can’t blame Poles for sticking to his vision.

He said his intention was to build through the draft. Huge swings for proven players are fun in the moment and usually give your team an immediate boost. The problem is that it is typically short-lived and ends up hurting the franchise in the long run. Chicago already saw that with both Jay Cutler and Khalil Mack. You do not make such deals unless you’re as close to certain as possible that it makes you a championship favorite. As good as Maxx Crosby is, that wasn’t the case from the Bears’ perspective.

Too many needs. Not enough money and draft capital. In the end, it didn’t matter. Crosby ended up right back where he started and now seems determined to stay put. There isn’t much for the Bears to do but move on and seek other opportunities. There will always be more. It’s the NFL. As things stand, it feels like the team intends to attack the draft with gusto, hoping to land a handful of capable starters and build on their success from last April.

The Green Bay Packers had been living in a golden age of football for the past 30 years. On the shoulders of two all-time great quarterbacks, they regularly won the division, reached three Super Bowls, and won two. Most importantly, they’d seized total control of the rivalry with the Chicago Bears. From 1992 through 2023, Green Bay was an astonishing 49-15 against their arch nemesis. That included a four-year stretch under Matt Lafleur, where they swept the season series. The team was untouchable.

It was easy for fans to sit back and simply state that the rivalry no longer existed. This is how it would always be. The Bears still sucked and would suck forevermore. Then something shifted in 2024. Rookie quarterback Caleb Williams led a last-second comeback to beat the Packers at Lambeau Field, ruining their chances at a higher seed in the playoffs and forcing them to face the eventual champion Philadelphia Eagles on the road. It also ended their streak of dominance.

Try as they might to shrug it off, there was a creeping dread up north. With the winter storms came the arrival of Ben Johnson, an offensive wunderkind from Detroit, to become the Bears’ new head coach. Still, the Packers managed to reassert themselves with a big win at home in the first matchup of 2025. Then everything imploded. First, they fell in overtime at Soldier Field after holding a 10-point 4th quarter lead. A few weeks later in the playoffs, they coughed up a 21-3 lead to lose 31-27. All of Wisconsin was left stunned.

How had their grip broken so suddenly?

The Chicago Bears now seem to have caused infighting.

Frustration has been growing in Green Bay. Some players aren’t overly happy with LaFleur because of the late-game collapses. Guys seem more interested in getting their shots in against the Bears to prove their toughness than in winning the games. Now it has spread to generation-on-generation violence. Recently, several current and former Packers attended a charity event at a local high school. Team legend Randall Cobb was asked the burning question. What happened in that playoff loss? Cobb, rather than assure the fan that reclaiming rivalry dominance was coming, decided to excuse himself from the discussion and pass it to Evan Williams, the current safety on the team that lost that game.

So much for franchise unity.

That is pretty brutal on Cobb’s part. While what he said is technically true, he didn’t have to do Williams like that. The fact is, he had a classic “back in my day” moment. Sure, he enjoyed tremendous success against the Chicago Bears in his career. Everybody remembers the 4th-and-8 bomb in 2013 that shattered the team’s dreams and sent them into a death spiral that took four years to climb out of. However, let’s be honest. That success was hardly because of Cobb. He enjoyed two big advantages.

1. A Hall of Fame quarterback in his prime
2. Facing a Bears team with inferior coaching and quarterback play

It’s easy to dominate a rivalry when that is the case. Go see what Tom Brady did to the Buffalo Bills during most of his career. Cobb never had to deal with what Williams does. He never faced Ben Johnson or Caleb Williams. Needing to only score 20 points a game to win is pretty easy. Maybe that is why the Packers never reached a Super Bowl with him on the team. They felt that the approach was good enough to beat most teams. It was very much not.

Coby Bryant became the centerpiece of the Chicago Bears‘ free agency plan last month, signing with them for three years and $40 million. The move received universal praise. Multiple teams wanted the Super Bowl champion safety, but Bears general manager Ryan Poles won the race. It was felt that the team had gained an athletic and versatile player known for high intelligence and instincts. His vocal leadership also stood out on Seattle’s excellent defense.

There is no question he makes them a better team. Unfortunately, the bittersweet part of this union is that it probably should’ve happened four years ago. According to Dan Wiederer of The Athletic, Poles admitted in an interview that he was being hounded to draft Bryant by one of the Bears’ most experienced scouts, Jeff Shiver. The longtime scout has been with the team for 38 seasons, helping to acquire some pretty good players in that time. He wanted Bryant to be one of them. Really, really badly.

If those sentiments felt familiar to Poles, it’s because four springs earlier, as he prepared to run his first draft as Bears GM, Bryant had caught the eye of longtime scout Jeff Shiver. As a college cornerback, Bryant amassed 10 interceptions at Cincinnati and won Shiver over with his experience and ball skills, his high-level football IQ and fire.

Shiver became so drawn to Bryant’s skill set and makeup that he had been, by Poles’ description, “on the table doing jumping jacks for (Bryant)” during the Bears’ pre-draft meetings in 2022.

“Jeff’s kind of that old-school scout,” Poles said. “When you’re in meetings with him, there is no middle ground; he grades extremely high or extremely low. For Coby, he was convinced the ceiling was going to be really high.”

The Coby Bryant missed opportunity taught Poles a big lesson.

Remember, he was the youngest general manager in the NFL at that time. It can be really easy to think you have all the answers. After all, he’d just won a Super Bowl with the Chiefs a couple of years before that. He had what he felt like was the blueprint to success. Having Ian Cunningham as his right-hand man certainly helped. However, most rookie GMs often fail to realize that there are several scouts in certain organizations who may be more experienced than they are and have a trained eye for spotting good players. Shiver was a major example. He has a pretty strong track record for finding gems.

Pretty much any notable player the Bears have drafted from the Midwest regions over the past 38 years probably had his fingerprints on it to some extent. That includes Jim Flanigan, Jordan Howard, Cody Whitehair, and Colston Loveland. It would be amazing to see his scouting reports on other such guys the Bears passed on over the years, to see if his wisdom was erroneously ignored.

It will be interesting to see if his influence is felt this year.

They hit big on a Midwest prospect last year with Colston. Could they go back to that well again with the 25th pick in the draft? There could be some fascinating options to choose from, like Toledo safety Emmanuel McNeil-Warren, Ohio State defensive tackle Kayden McDonald, Indiana wide receiver Omar Cooper Jr., and Illinois defensive end Gabe Jacas. Maybe Shiver will give one of them the jumping-jacks-on-the-table treatment like Coby Bryant. Even at his advanced age, the man hasn’t lost his passion for the job.

That is probably part of why the organization has kept him around for so long. It sounds like Poles learned his lesson and started trusting Shiver more often after that. Bryant is finally a member of the team. If he keeps up the level of play he showed in Seattle over the next few years, nobody will worry about what happened in that draft. Still, one has to imagine Shiver ribs the young GM about it from time to time, especially after the big plays Bryant made last season to win a championship.