The first wave of free agency is in the books, and all four teams in the NFC North have begun shaping their rosters for the 2026 season.<\/p>\n
Here’s a look at how rosters have changed throughout the division:<\/p>\n
\n CHICAGO<\/p>\n
2025 record: 11-6 (division champs)<\/p>\n
Top re-signings: DL Daniel Hardy, T Braxton Jones, DB Elijah Hicks, LB D’Marco Jackson, QB Case Keenum, OL Jordan McFadden<\/p>\n
Key free-agent additions: C Garrett Bradbury (via trade), S Coby Bryant, LB Devin Bush, WR Kalif Raymond, DT Neville Gallimore, DB Cam Lewis, EDGE Kentavius Street, T Jedrick Wills Jr.<\/p>\n
Free-agent losses: S Kevin Byard, CB Nahshon Wright, LB Tremaine Edmunds, WR Olamide Zaccheaus, EDGE Dominique Robinson, DT Chris Williams, TE Durham Smythe<\/p>\n
Twentyman’s take: The Bears did a nice job of replacing the retired Drew Dalman by trading for Bradbury, a veteran with seven years of experience and 105 starts under his belt. Bryant and Bush are nice additions to the defense, and Raymond is a sneaky signing that improves Chicago’s depth at receiver and gives head coach Ben Johnson a speedy weapon to deploy on both offense and special teams.<\/p>\n
Chicago could still use more talent\/depth on defense but there’s still the second and third wave of free agency and next month’s NFL Draft to fill in some of the holes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first wave of free agency is in the books, and all four teams in the NFC North…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2070],"tags":[374,692,391,2493,7,416,415,6,43354],"class_list":["post-811826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-bears","tag-bears","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-bears","tag-chicagobears","tag-football","tag-homepage-centerpiece-package","tag-news-twentyman","tag-nfl","tag-tom-kennedy"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116227414678721300","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}