Welcome to the 2025 Offseason Primer!

Mercifully, the 2024 season has finally come to an end. Now we turn our attention to the offseason, where Chicago will look to hire a new head coach, while attempting to build a quality roster around rising second-year QB Caleb Williams. I’ll have in-depth analysis on Williams and other returning players later in the offseason, but for now, I want to take a look at where the roster currently stands. Let’s examine:

What the Bears’ depth chart looks like as of today.
Which Chicago impact players are set to hit free agency.
What Chicago’s salary cap situation looks like.
Bears players that could be considered for cuts or extensions.

Current Depth Chart

Let’s start by looking at the 34 players the Bears currently have under contract for the 2025 season, shown in a rough depth chart below.

(Side note: Click on the image to view in full if it doesn’t show up properly. Sorry for any formatting issues.)

A few thoughts:

At first glance, the biggest hole is obviously on the offensive line, where the Bears only have four guys under contract. Three of those players are tackles, so the interior, with only Ryan Bates currently signed, is basically a blank slate. This was easily the weakest position group on the roster in 2024, and the Bears will need to add three new starters here this offseason.

Outside of that, there are several other positions that clearly need attention.
- WR: DJ Moore and Rome Odunze are clear starters, but there is nothing behind them. Tyler Scott should be fighting for a roster spot, so there’s plenty of room to fill in the depth chart here for role players and special teamers.
- DE: They need a DE who can push DeMarcus Walker for a starting spot, with the loser serving as the top backup.
- DT: The starters are fine, but the depth is nonexistent. Zacch Pickens should be fighting for a roster spot, so at least two new rotational players are needed here.
- LB: Very similar to DT, the two starters are fine, but the depth is nonexistent. Noah Sewell should be fighting for a roster spot, so they need some better talent to fill in as SAM backer and ST players.

Free Agents

Now let’s move on to looking at players from 2024 who are free agents. Here is the full list of unrestricted free agents grouped by position, with players who started at least five games for the Bears in 2024 indicated with an asterisk.

RB: Travis Homer, Darrynton Evans
WR: Keenan Allen*, DeAndre Carter, Collin Johnson, Nsimba Webster
TE: Marcedes Lewis, Stephen Carlson
OL: Teven Jenkins*, Coleman Shelton*, Matt Pryor*, Larry Borom, Jake Curhan
DE: Darrell Taylor, Jacob Martin
DT: Byron Cowart
LB: Amen Ogbongbemiga
S: Adrian Colbert, Tarvarius Moore
LS: Patrick Scales, Scott Daly

In addition to those 21 players, the Bears also have 10 more free agents they still have some sort of control over.

OL Bill Murray, DE Daniel Hardy, CB Ameer Speed, DT Jonathan Ford, and S Douglas Coleman III are exclusive rights free agents. You can read a full explanation here, but basically this means the Bears can bring them back to camp on a minimum-level deal with no guaranteed money if they so choose. I would imagine many of these players will be back trying out for the roster in camp.
DT Chris Williams, LB Jack Sanborn, CB Josh Blackwell, CB Jaylon Jones, and OL Doug Kramer are restricted free agents, which means the Bears can place tenders ranging from $3-7 million on them to keep some sort of control (full details here). I don’t think any of these players, who are all backups and/or special teamers, will warrant a $3M investment, but the Bears could still look to re-sign them to minimum level deals (or close to them) if they want to have them back in camp for cheap.

A few thoughts on this list of players:

Most of these guys would be cheap to bring back, and could help fill out roster depth and compete for roster spots in training camp.
A few of them would take appreciably more than the minimum to sign. Particularly interesting ones include:
- WR Keenan Allen: he won’t make the $23M he did in 2024, but I do wonder how robust his market ends up being after a down season. Spotrac has him projected for 2 years and $33M, which I think will be more than what the Bears want to pay for an aging player to be their WR3.
- OL Teven Jenkins: He’s generally pretty solid when he plays, but he’s only played in 46 of 68 possible games in his career and has left another 10 games or so of those early due to injury. I don’t think the Bears will bring him back simply because they need somebody more reliable in that situation.
- OL Coleman Shelton: He played pretty much every snap this year on a 1 year, $3.5M contract, and while he wasn’t great, he also wasn’t terrible. Pro Football Focus (PFF) has him as the 10th highest graded center on the year, with the 16th highest pass block efficiency rating. It’s supposed to be a really weak draft class for centers, so I won’t be shocked if the Bears bring Shelton back on a similar one year deal and focus most of their offseason attention on upgrading the guard spots around him.

Salary Cap Situation

Let’s move now to the financial side of things and take a glance at where the Bears stand relative to the salary cap. We don’t know the exact salary cap figure for 2025 yet, but it is being projected to be between $265-275M, so we’ll use $265M for a conservative estimate

The table below shows the Bears’ current cap limit (grey) against their current cap charges (blue), giving a current listing of cap space (orange). All data is pulled from Over the Cap.

A brief explanation of some of the charges:

Draft cap is based on 2024 cap charges for players picked at the spots where the Bears currently have selections.
In the offseason, only the top 51 salary cap hits count. The Bears currently have 34 players under contract, plus 8 draft picks, so I filled in $1M per player for the nine additional players needed to round out the roster to 51 players. Actual minimum salaries vary by years of experience (full table), but $1M is a reasonable estimate there.

Thus the cap space shown here is how much money the Bears have to spend over the minimum as they look to fill out their roster. This is different than the number you see most places reporting right now, but I think it’s a more accurate one. Either way, the Bears will have the money to make a few significant additions in free agency.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that teams typically like to go into camp with about $10M in cap room to account for any in-season moves that are needed, so essentially the Bears have about $40M in spending power right now.

Possible Cuts

Cap space is fluid, and one of the easiest ways to create more of it is by cutting players who are overpaid. The Bears have a few such cuts likely coming this offseason.

The table below shows every player who could save more than $2M in cap space if they were cut. I do not expect all, or even most, of these players to be cut, but wanted to show the full range of possibilities.

A few thoughts:

Gone:
- TE Gerald Everett is the only cut I am confident will happen. He played less than 25% of snaps and had under 50 receiving yards last year. That’s not worth anything close to $6M, so he’s gone.
Could be gone:
- OL Ryan Bates: He never really got healthy this year and could be cut with no dead money. It seems likely Bates is back as a versatile interior OL backup, but it’s possible the GM decides he can spend that money on somebody better instead.
- K Cairo Santos: He’s generally been reliable for the Bears, but his lack of ability from distance has been a problem at times. I think he’s likely back, but won’t be shocked if the GM decides he wants to try and find a bigger leg. Camp competition with the possibility of being cut right before the season seems more likely than a spring cut at this point.
- LB TJ Edwards: This might seem like a surprise, but Edwards saw his play take a nosedive this year. He’s never been the most athletic LB, but looked to have lost a step in space, which is why he especially struggled in coverage. PFF credits him with giving up 691 yards in coverage on the year, 2nd most among all LB, and allowed 10.5 yards/target, which would have been the worst mark among LB in the NFL for 2023. He’ll be 29 at the start of the season, so it’s possible the GM decides he can upgrade Edwards for comparable money.

Cutting Everett brings the Bears to around $45M in effective spending power, and that number could climb towards $50M if the Bears cut any of Bates, Santos, or Edwards. Suffice it to say Chicago will have plenty of money to work with this offseason.

Extension Candidates

Of course, some of that money could be spent on guys from their own roster. Signing players who have one year left on their current contract is typically how you get the most team-friendly deals, because players are willing to give up a little money for the early financial security. In essence, the team buys one year of injury risk.

The Bears have several notable players with one year left on their contracts who could fit this bill, including CB Kyler Gordon, S Jaquan Brisker, LT Braxton Jones, and DT Andrew Billings. However, I don’t think it is likely the Bears will try to extend any of them this offseason, as all but Billings have long injury histories and all but Gordon are currently out with season-ending injuries. It seems unlikely the Bears will want to take on a year of injury risk given those injury situations.

Wrapping it Up

Here’s what we’ve found:

Bears need a WR3, an entirely new interior OL, and a new starter at DE, plus improved depth at DT and LB.
Once they cut Gerald Everett, the Bears will have about $45M to spend in free agency, even after leaving room to sign draft picks, fill out the roster with minimum salary players, and have in-season wiggle room.
There aren’t really any logical candidates for early extensions on the roster.

For as difficult as 2024 was, this team has a pretty high ratio of resources to holes entering the offseason. Accordingly, I think we’ll see the Bears move aggressively in free agency to sign a few top of the market deals. I fully anticipate they will sign one or two highly paid interior offensive lineman, and likely at least one rotational defensive lineman as well. They should also be able to land three instant starters in the draft since they have 3 selections among the top 45 picks.

2024 was brutal, but the Bears have the resources this offseason to significantly upgrade their roster. If they can successfully couple that with a meaningful coaching upgrade, this team should be ready to compete sooner rather than later.