Grading the Chicago Bears Day Three of the 2026 NFL Draft and Roster Outlook

The 2026 NFL Draft is now in the books. Unfortunately, the Chicago Bears are still looking for an impact pass rusher.

Just kidding...but not really. With the overwhelming majority of free agency completed and the Draft now done, GM Ryan Poles somehow navigated the offseason without addressing the team's biggest concerns: a poor pass rush that generated the NFL's 22nd-ranked pressure rate and terrible run defense that permitted 5.0 yards per attempt, ranking 29th. Of note, the only four teams that allowed more yards per carry and their approach to the offseason:

• New York Giants: traded star DT Dexter Lawrence, but then drafted Ohio State Edge Arvell Reese at #5 and Auburn NT Bobby Jamison-Travis
• Cincinnati: signed DT Jonathan Allen and Edge Boye Mafe; traded #10 overall pick to Giants for DT Dexter Lawrence; used their top pick (#41) on Texas A&M Edge Cashius Howell
• Buffalo: signed Edge Bradley Chubb; used their top pick (#36) on Clemson Edge T.J. Parker and a 5th on Penn State DT Zane Durant

But the Bears? Well, you all know. It's bizarre at best and devastating at worst. Here's hoping for bizarre!

Let's look at Poles' work from Day Three of the Draft before turning to the roster for the 2026 season.

Bears Trade #129 and #144 to Carolina for #124 and #166

I liked this trade at first blush. The trade-up is modest, but this is always at a key point in the Draft when teams are still largely working off of tight lists of contributors before moving to dart throws in the rounds that follow. The Draft pick value charts largely agree, to wit:

• Jimmy Johnson Chart
• Bears Send: 77 (43 + 34)
• Bears Get: 73 (48 + 25)
• NET: -4 (equivalent to an early-7th)
• Chase Stuart Chart
• Bears Send: 6.7 (3.7 + 3.0)
• Bears Get: 5.9 (3.9 + 2.0)
• NET: -0.8 (equivalent to a late-6th)
• Spielberger-Fitzgerald Chart
• Bears Send: 1,018 (537 + 481)
• Bears Get: 966 (557 + 409)
• NET: -52 (equivalent to one-quarter of the value of the Mr. Irrelevant pick)

The Bears gave away almost no value and got to get their guy. It's funny to me that all three charts dislike this move; to me, this is the right way to do it.

Grade: B+

#124: Bears Draft Texas CB Malik Muhammad

The DTs I liked the most were all gone, and the DEs that I liked at all were gone, too. So, we reached the true best-player-available phase of the Draft. And Muhammad fits that bill. Like many folks, I can't forget the visual of Muhammad grabbing all of Jeremiah Smith on a PBU way back in Week One, but he is a good looking prospect. The physical profile is strong (9.51 RAS) with elite speed and explosion leading the way, and Muhammad played a ton of football for the Longhorns over the last three seasons.

I do have questions about the roster impact. Muhammad is undeniably behind Jaylon Johnson, Tyrique Stevenson, and Kyler Gordon in the CB room. That likely leaves three spots for the four of Muhammad, Terell Smith, Zah Frazier, and Josh Blackwell. More on this below.

For now, Muhammad is a good player and presents strong value in this spot of the Draft. There's a good chance that he becomes a starter on his rookie deal, but the grade does take a gentle hit due to positional value to this Bears roster.

Grade: C+ (remember, that means a tick above average)

#166: Bears Draft Arizona State LB Keyshaun Elliott

I had to learn about Elliott after the Bears took him. Surprise surprise: he's a plus athlete (8.74 RAS) thanks to tremendous explosion, great agility, and above-average speed. Elliott doesn't look like an athletic freak, but after watching Tremaine Edmunds deliver average production despite freakish athleticism, that's fine.

Elliott should offer both linebacking depth and special teams ability from the jump. He doesn't look exceptionally fast on film, but he does look like a football player. I found his run defense plenty compelling, but his pass defense will need to develop. That's fine for a 5th rounder.

As with Muhammad, there's some pressure on other presumed roster players here, namely Noah Sewell as he recovers from his Achilles tear in December, returnee Jack Sanbord, and even 2025 4th-round flop Ruben Hyppolite. More on this below, too.

Grade: C (average)

Bears Trade #239 and #241 to Buffalo for #213

I liked this trade even better than the earlier one. The 7th round of the Draft is a cesspool. The top of the 7th and the late-6th, however, tend to offer a couple of useful players still. The Bears didn't need roster bodies; they needed to find someone who actually fit their profile and would likely be drafted.

• Jimmy Johnson Chart
• Bears Send: 2 (1 + 1)
• Bears Get: 5.8
• NET: 3.8 (equivalent to an early-7th)
• Chase Stuart Chart
• Bears Send: 0
• Bears Get: 0.5
• NET: 0.5 (equivalent to a late-6th (for free!))
• Spielberger-Fitzgerald Chart
• Bears Send: 425 (225 + 220)
• Bears Get: 283
• NET: -142 (equivalent to two-thirds of the value of the Mr. Irrelevant pick)

The Bears gave away almost no value and got to get their guy to an even greater degree than earlier on Day Three.

Grade: A

#213: Bears Draft Georgia Tech DT Jordan van den Berg

Ironically, van den Berg is the Bears draftee that I've followed most closely -- despite being the last pick -- thanks to his three years at Penn State. The story on van den Berg then was easy: he was a freakish athlete who grew from WR to LB to DE to DT late in high school and early in college. After a pop year at Iowa Western, van den Berg tried to work his way into the Nittany DT rotation...and failed. So, off to Atlanta, where he found his way into a starting role and produced really solid results. His athleticism is unquestioned: his 10.00 RAS (not a typo) was the result of his good size, elite strength, elite explosion, and elite speed. He doesn't even need to be a start, but the path to playing time is entirely open for van den Berg. I love this pick. Would it have been better with another DT two days earlier? Of course! But that doesn't impact the value of adding van den Berg.

Grade: A

OK. The Draft is done. In response to a Bears writer on Twitter, I fired off a quick response as to what I would have done. Having chewed on it just a bit longer, for posterity's sake, here's what I would have liked to have seen the Bears do at each of their spots in the Draft. To keep things fair, I'll assume that I made the same trades that Poles did:

#25: Clemson DT Peter Woods

#57: Toledo S Emmanuel McNeil-Warren

#69: Penn State DE Dani Dennis-Sutton

#89: Southeast Louisiana DT Kaleb Proctor

#124: Auburn C Connor Lew

#166: Penn State DT Zane Durant

#213: Texas TE Jack Endries

The rationale for the above is obvious enough: the Bears don't have quality DTs and could really use a pass rushing boost inside. Proctor and Durant would displace Kentavius Street and James Lynch, but each of those signees leave just $100K of dead cap hit behind if cut. Lew fell due to an ACL tear in 2025, but the Bears don't need the center draftee to play in 2026, so they can wait and buy his upside.

Looking ahead to the actual 2026 roster, I'm left with a few big thoughts. But first, here's a projection for the Bears' 53-man roster (note that LT Ozzy Trapilo will be on the PUP list and, thus, won't count):

QB (3): Caleb Williams, Tyson Bagent, Case Keenum

RB (3): D'Andre Swift, Kyle Monangai, Roschon Johnson

TE (4): Colston Loveland, Cole Kmet, Sam Roush, Hayden Large

WR (5): Rome Odunze, Luther Burden, Kalif Raymond, Jahdae Walker, Zavion Thomas

OT (4): Darnell Wright, Braxton Jones, Theo Benedet, Jedrick Wills

G (4): Joe Thuney, Jonah Jackson, Kiran Amegadjie, Luke Newman

C (2): Garrett Bradbury, Logan Jones

DE (5): Montez Sweat, Dayo Odeyingbo, Austin Booker, Shemar Turner, Daniel Hardy

DT (5): Grady Jarrett, Gervon Dexter, Neville Gallimore, Jordan van den Berg, Kentavius Street

ILB (1): Devin Bush 

OLB (3): T.J. Edwards, D'Marco Jackson, Keyshaun Elliott

CB (6): Jaylon Johnson, Kyler Gordon, Tyrique Stevenson, Malik Muhammad, Zah Frazier, Josh Blackwell

S (5): Coby Bryant, Dillon Thieneman, Cam Lewis, Elijah Hicks, Jaylon Jones

SP (3): Cairo Santos, Tory Taylor, Beau Gardner

Big thoughts on this roster:

1. There's not a lot of space for potential UDFAs to make it.
1. There hasn't been a ton of discussion about Hayden Large, but he seems like a good bet to make the team because (i) Poles gave him $67,500 guaranteed as a UDFA, (ii) there's no obvious TE4 or WR6 yet, and (ii) he's an Iowa TE with an 8.92 RAS. A tick undersized but otherwise an excellent athlete.
2. A few recent draftees are in trouble.
1. Amegadjie gets cut in basically all projections. I still think they'll find a way to keep him to put his athleticism to use in the interior.
2. Terell Smith has looked great...when he's on the field. But he's basically never on the field and in the final year of his deal.
3. The roster is light on linebackers, but Hyppolite being unplayable likely forces Poles's hand here. Thankfully, the CBs and Ss pick up the special teams slack.
1. Ryan Poles joked that ESPN and/or NFL Network wouldn't have a video package ready to go for Ruben Hyppolite during the 2025 Draft. Looks like ESPN/NFLN were right!
2. Here's hoping we don't have the same conversation about Zavion Thomas next year at this time.
3. There are some wonderfully compelling roster battles. We've heard so much about Poles and Johnson wanting to build competition. Success! 
1. G: Jonah McFadden v. Luke Newman v. Kiran Amegadjie v. Caden Barnett
1. Barnett received a $277,500 guarantee, McFadden received only a $25,000 guarantee but just started a playoff game, Amegadjie was a 3rd-round pick by Poles, and Newman was a recent 6th-round pick by Poles. There is a maximum of two roster spots for this group. The battles will be fierce.
2. OT: Kiran Amegadjie v. Theo Benedet v. Jedrick Wills v. Braxton Jones
1. Jones will make the roster, but these four are fighting for the LT job with some also fighting for roster spots. Yes, I double-counted Amegadjie; his athletic profile is such that he should be given chances to make the team.
3. LB: Ruben Hyppolite v. Keyshaun Elliott v. Jack Sanborn v. Noah Sewell
1. This one is weird. Hyppolite is bad at football but very fast. Elliott is a new draftee. Sanborn has good experience but limited production. Sewell is coming off of a brutal late-season injury. There are probably two roster spots for this group. Signs point to Elliott and...someone else? Maybe? It's possible that the room consists only of T.J. Edwards, Devin Bush, Elliott, and D'Marco Jackson. That sounds crazy until you consider Hyppolite's ineffectiveness, Sanborn's very low ceiling, and Sewell's injury.
4. DT: Kentavius Street v. Jordan van den Berg v. James Lynch v. Jayden Loving
1. Loving throws a real wrench into this battle. It looked like the fourth and fifth roster spots would come down to two of the first three in the group, but Loving secured a hefty $245,000 guarantee as a UDFA with an unreal 9.93 RAS. Loving is short (6'1") with short arms, but his explosion, speed, and agility are otherworldly. Would the Bears really carry a roster with Grady Jarrett, Gervon Dexter, Neville Gallimore, and two rookies obtained outside of the top-200 picks in the Draft? I don't think so, but I'm not certain. I won't be stunned if the Bears make up an injury for Loving to sneak him onto the Practice Squad. I'll guess that they do that, rostering Street and van den Berg while moving on from Lynch.
5. CB: Zah Frazier v. Terell Smith v. Tyrique Stevenson v. Malik Muhammad v. Josh Blackwell
1. How many of these guys are going to make the teams? Could it be...all of them? No! But it's possible that four of the five above do make the team. All comes with blemishes. Blackwell is a pure special teamer. Muhammad is grabby. Stevenson is inconsistent. Smith is constantly injured and it's fair to wonder what his athleticism looks like at this point. And Frazier disappeared during camp last year.
4. The team-building philosophy is perplexing. It starts with the DT group. Let me weave this story.
1. Since Ben Johnson arrived, the Bears have allocated the following assets to the interior of the offensive line:
1. 4th-round pick (Thuney)
2. Top-of-the-market salary cap allocation (Thuney again)
3. 6th-round pick (Jackson)
4. Top-of-the-market salary cap allocation (Jackson again)
5. Top-of-the-market salary cap allocation (Dalman)
6. 5th-round pick (Bradbury)
7. Middle-market salary cap allocation (Bradbury again)
8. 2nd-round pick (Jones)
2. That is an incredible amount of assets allocated to the interior OL. And it has worked! The interior OL was extremely productive in 2025 and looks poised to be productive with contingency plans in 2026. 
3. And yet, Poles has spent precious little on the interior of the defensive line. If collapsing the pocket from the middle destroys the offense, it stands to reason that the Bears should be working to collapse the opposing offense's pocket as much as possible.
5. Poles appears to have badly misread the market this offseason by allocating a crazy amount of assets to the safety room in a year when the free agent market was flooded. The result? Poles spent lots of cash and draft capital to fix what wasn't a problem in 2025. Yes, Kevin Byard and Jaquan Brisker were free agents. But no, it wasn't necessary to fix this position by utilizing the top free agent contract for a safety at an AAV of $13.3M (more than Byard and Brisker combined) plus a 1st-round pick.
1. After Caleb Downs went at #11 and Thieneman went at #25, then next safety didn't come off of the board until #58.
2. The net result of "fixing" the safety position? There was no meaningful cap space or Draft capital left for the DT room. Thus, the safety group looks good, but the DT room is among the NFL's worst.
6. It's fine to avoid addressing needs in the Draft, but not if you've also avoided addressing said needs in free agency. The Bears find themselves in the unenviable spot of needing to convince someone like DJ Reader or Calais Campbell to join the party and squeezing whatever remaining juice they have left out of them. An injury to Dexter or Jarrett likely torpedoes the season. Yikes!

With all of the above said, there's only one question that really needs to be answered: are the Bears better now than they were at the end of the 2025 season? That's a complicated question to answer given the impact of the salary cap on Poles' roster construction, but for me, it looks like a "no" on paper. And yet, it's reasonable to expect improvement from Ben Johnson as head coach, from Caleb Williams entering Y3, from Colston Loveland and Luther Burden in Y2, and especially from an emerging talent like Austin Booker. On top of that, I'm now a massive fan of Zavion Thomas and Sam Roush. Would I have drafted them? No! But they're Bears now, so I love them.

To recap the grades, here's the entire offseason, starting with the Draft:

• #25: Oregon S Dillon Thieneman: B
• #57: Iowa C Logan Jones: C
• Trade #60 for #69 and #144: B
• #69: Stanford TE Sam Roush: C-
• #89: LSU WR Zavion Thomas: F-
• Trade #129 and #144 for #124 and #166: B+
• #124: Texas CB Malik Muhammad: C+
• #166: Arizona State LB Keyshaun Elliott: C
• Trade #239 and #241 for #213: A
• #213: Georgia Tech DT Jordan van den Berg: A

And now free agency:

• Trade WR D.J. Moore and #163 for #60: B-
• Trade 2027 5th for C Garrett Bradbury: D
• Sign S Coby Bryant to a three-year, $40M deal with $25.75M guaranteed: D+
• Sign ILB Devin Bush to a three-year, $30M deal with $21M guaranteed: C
• Sign DT Neville Gallimore to a two-year, $10M deal with $5M guaranteed: D-
• Sign OLB D'Marco Jackson to a two-year, $7.5M deal with $3.625M guaranteed: A-
• Sign OT Braxton Jones to a one-year, $5M deal with $3M guaranteed: A
• Sign S Cam Lewis to a two-year, $6M deal with $2.75M guaranteed: B+
• Sign DE Daniel Hardy to a two-year, $5M deal with $2.45M guaranteed: C+

Free Agency Grade: C-

Draft Grade: C

Offseason Grade: D

Huh? The disconnect between the components and the final grade is simple: I expect the Bears to be worse on both lines, so it's hard to call this a winning offseason. Even with individual moves looking good, the overall step back up front is crippling. However, despite the imperfect offseason, the Bears have a chance to be good in 2026 and I don't have to squint too hard to see them being really good. That's all I need in April. Bear Down.