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Soon-to-be former Bears wide receiver DJ Moore.
DJ Moore has broken his silence on the major NFL trade that will send the star wide receiver from the Chicago Bears to the Buffalo Bills for the 2026 season.
According to NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero, the Bears have agreed to terms on a trade that will send Moore — their $110 million wide receiver — and a 2026 fifth-round pick to the Bills in exchange for their 2026 second-round pick (No. 60 overall). The trade will clear $16.5 million in cap space for Chicago ahead of the start of 2026 free agency.
In the aftermath of the news, Moore jumped on his Instagram account and added a few posts about the trade to his story. He later penned and posted a farewell to Chicago.
“I Wanna Say Appreciate all the love and support the last three years. My family and I were proud to call this place home and this community has been unbelievable to us. We will miss you all,” Moore wrote March 5 in an Instagram post.
“To the fans, you all embraced me with open arms from my first day here. I gave my all every time I stepped on the field and hopefully I made you all proud with the way I performed. We have some unbelievable memories at Soldier Field and you all are a huge part of them!! To my Bears teammates, coaches and staff, I enjoyed going to work with you every day. I’ll miss seeing you all at Halas Hall. You all made me grateful every day to be a Chicago Bear!! I appreciate you all.
“& It’s Always F…… [The Packers]”
The teams cannot process the Moore trade until the start of the 2026 league year at 4 p.m. ET on March 11, the official start of the unrestricted NFL free agency period.
DJ Moore Trade Netted Bears Quality Compensation
Speculation about whether the Bears would trade Moore has persisted for weeks, but the compensation that Chicago received in the deal came in higher than expected.
For weeks, most analysts and beat writers had projected that the best the Bears would get in exchange for Moore would be a mid-round pick. Instead, general manager Ryan Poles and his staff negotiated the Bills’ second-round pick out of them, attaching a fifth-rounder to the package along with Moore to ensure they received a better-valued pick.
While the subtraction of a fifth-round pick does drive down the net value of the return into the mid-round range, it is significantly better than many of the projections, which frequently predicted that the Bears would land either a fourth- or fifth-round selection.
Bears Also Cleared Major Cap Space With DJ Moore
The second-round pick that the Bears received in their trade will get the most attention, but they also had the added benefit of shedding their largest cap hit from their books.
The Bears will clear $16.5 million in cap space by trading Moore to the Bills, who agreed to an adjustment in Moore’s contract upon agreeing to terms on the trade. According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the Bills will now guarantee $15.5 million of Moore’s $23.485 million base salary in 2028, a move that indicates Buffalo wants him for the long term.
Moore already has his 2026 salary (the same $23.485 million figure) fully guaranteed, but Schefter added that his 2027 salary (same again) will become fully guaranteed on the third day of the new league year next Friday, March 13. Under the previous terms of his deal with the Bears, only $15.5 million in guaranteed salary would have triggered.
The Bears will have now cleared roughly $44 million in cap space in time for the start of the new league year after Moore’s trade, Drew Dalman’s retirement and March 5’s release of veteran linebacker Tremaine Edmunds, which freed $15.5 million in space.
Jordan J. Wilson is a sports reporter who covers the NFL and MLB for Heavy.com, with a focus on the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers. He has previously covered all levels of sports — high school, college and pro — for a variety of publications including The Indianapolis Star, The News-Gazette, Springfield State-Journal Register and Peoria Journal Star. More about Jordan J. Wilson
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