I agree that Odunze is not going anywhere. Curious to get your opinion on this, though. Whose long term potential do you like better, Odunze or Burden?
Bears
- Thread starter PowerI66
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Defense and OL depth will be their draft priorities. Unless someone unexpectedly falls into their lap I don't see the Bears drafting any offensive skill position players.
I don't think you can directly compare the two like that because they're different players. Rome is your typical outside WR and LB3 is more of that twitchy slot player. I think they will be evaluated differently as their careers progress.
Oh man, I like both but I will say Burden because of his yards after catch potential. He came on as his rookie season progressed and I see his role getting larger next year.
I think most of those are concentrated in the 4th round. I'm going to guess they combine most of those to move up to a 3rd or 2nd
The Bears have 7 draft picks, they don't have a 6th round pick but have 2 in the 7th. They don't have the draft capital to move up to the 2nd or 3rd round unless they start using future picks.
Guessing they know more than has gone public so I wouldn't be surprised if news on Nagy drops this week.
Well the Titans dodged a bullet by NOT hiring Nagy. I have a family member who is a Titans fan and she was praying they didn't hire him. LOL
The Bears had a great season, relative to their performance in recent years. But, let's not get too far out over our skis here in terms of how great they are relative to the rest of the league.
You know that line that losing teams have when they say that they were in a game until the end and either the other team made "one more play" than they did or "if the ball had bounced our way a couple of times, who knows what might have happened?" I'm not saying that line isn't true (at times), but I am saying that it also works in reverse for winning teams. For example, if the ball had bounced in the direction of the other team or if a questionable official's call, or non-call, had NOT gone the winning team's way, then the winning team would have been the other team.
You can apply that "logic" to a whole season as well as a single game. Given the fact that a substantial majority of the Bears' victories this year were by one score or less, glass empty kinds of fans and pundits might say that the Bears could have VERY easily finished the end of the season at 8-9, 7-10, or worse and not made the playoffs. And they wouldn't be wrong.
Despite the above, I am a realistic glass half full kind of fan. That is to say that I believe the Bears made some great improvement from last season, and they also improved greatly over the course of THIS season. The realism I want to inject here is that only time will tell if the Bears have truly turned the corner from mediocrity to greatness (or at least above averageness). I am hopeful that they have, but only time will tell if this year was an aberration or the beginning of a run of sustained competitiveness at the highest levels of the league. They need more games under their belt to prove more convincingly that they belong in that highest level.
You know that line that losing teams have when they say that they were in a game until the end and either the other team made "one more play" than they did or "if the ball had bounced our way a couple of times, who knows what might have happened?" I'm not saying that line isn't true (at times), but I am saying that it also works in reverse for winning teams. For example, if the ball had bounced in the direction of the other team or if a questionable official's call, or non-call, had NOT gone the winning team's way, then the winning team would have been the other team.
You can apply that "logic" to a whole season as well as a single game. Given the fact that a substantial majority of the Bears' victories this year were by one score or less, glass empty kinds of fans and pundits might say that the Bears could have VERY easily finished the end of the season at 8-9, 7-10, or worse and not made the playoffs. And they wouldn't be wrong.
Despite the above, I am a realistic glass half full kind of fan. That is to say that I believe the Bears made some great improvement from last season, and they also improved greatly over the course of THIS season. The realism I want to inject here is that only time will tell if the Bears have truly turned the corner from mediocrity to greatness (or at least above averageness). I am hopeful that they have, but only time will tell if this year was an aberration or the beginning of a run of sustained competitiveness at the highest levels of the league. They need more games under their belt to prove more convincingly that they belong in that highest level.
50% of all NFL games are one score games, for reference.
Obviously only time will tell if they really turned the corner.
This is the NFL, you do not know year to year for a bunch of reasons but having a QB and a HC make it a hell of a lot easier to sustain some type of success.
As we sit here on 1/20/26 things look a hell of a lot better than almost all years past.
How they handle the offseason will be huge. As it stands now the Bears have negative $4 mil in cap space. DJ is all but gone, Kmet's contract will likely need to be restructured. Even given that I don't see how they can resign both Brisker and Byard unless Byard accepts a team friendly short term deal as he'll be 33 at the start of next season. Given his contract the Bears may be lucky to get a 3rd for DJ, maybe a 3rd and a 5th or something in that range.
I think they sign Byrd and draft a S relatively high.
I think Edmunds is gone as well, he saves them I think $11MM. Edit, overthecap says they would save $15MM.
Of the two Byard will be cheaper, but Brisker is the better long term option in my opinion. Define relatively high. With them having a good year all of their picks are in the bottom quarter of each given round. I can see them drafting a safety, but I'm just not sure it will be a day 1 starter.
Wouldn't surprise me if it was r2 or r3. But I have no clue on strength of the position in draft etc...not there yet.
Agree, ideally you keep Brisker but his FA value is going to be high.
We shall see, there will be restructuring that happens.
This is a good post and I agree with a lot you said here. We can talk about what the Bears need to do to upgrade, etc. Or maybe how the "bounces" of the ball went...or didn't go. Outside of the fact 2025 was a season few people anticipated, including me, I had a concern I have had for years with this team as we look back.
Without question the Bears had an outstanding November and in reality it is what got them where they ended up. The fact is, after they beat the Eagles on 11/28 they really didn't look any better than most teams in the league. The Bears have had some bad records after December 1st for years. This year they lost three out of their last four games and from December 7th they went 3-4 the rest of the way. And two of those wins were miracle type wins. This has to be fixed next year.
Don't get me wrong. I am happy how things went overall in 2025. But by no means am I satisfied.
Had to edit something I forgot. The Bears need to do better within the division. I look at all of the teams that made the playoffs and they all had better division records. The Bears got lucky with things falling the way they did outside division play. It is probably unusual for a team to win two division games and still win the division. It can be done but I am sure it isn't the norm.
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