Urso

British 🇬🇧 based, avid and tortured Bears fan. Regular posts on Chicago Bears, and NFL news. Occasional musings on Medium.

[The Cap Is a Myth @The_Cap_is_Fake]

No, it doesn't make a difference if you still want to cut Dayo next year

You can make an argument that the biggest consideration of who to restructure is simply "least likely to be traded" since trade consideration creates the most possible friction on cap acceleration issues

[Eagles Eric @EaglesXsandOs]

NFL Playcaller Run/Pass Predictability

Ben Johnson is the least predictable play caller in the NFL when it comes to run/pass tendency

Andy Reid likes throwing no matter what

[Urso @buildingSBbears]

Wow, interesting way of putting it all together. Bears may rue that chance.

Nice clean visuals too

[NFL Deserve-To-Win-O-Meter @nfl_simulator]

🚨 LA are luck merchants! 🚨

🏈 LA @ CHI — NFC Divisional
Final: LA 20, CHI 17
Deserve-to-Win: LA 8% / CHI 92% (89–94%)

Biggest swing: CHI drop (95% catch) — 2.5 pt of luck to LA

#NFL #RamsHouse #DaBears

[Urso @buildingSBbears]

@LaPantera73 @Johnathan_Wood1 Ok, that’s helpful knowledge.
I thought I’ve seen previous years where the Saints have been massively in the red (like 50+!) and the talk towards the end of the season was always ‘gotta find ways to restructure our way back into the black’ but maybe I’m mistaken

[Urso @buildingSBbears]

@Kirsten_Tanis1

[Urso @buildingSBbears]

@niconatali25 @BearsNationCHI

[Urso @buildingSBbears]

@AaronLemingNFL Yeah agree, they were over $10mill in the red. Bears twitter starting to go into overdrive thinking a big trade is coming but I think this is just cap management.

[Urso @buildingSBbears]

@EDuerrwaechter Probably not. Needed to get out of the red.

[Urso @buildingSBbears]

uooohhh oh.

I can imagine Bears twitter is going to go nuts over this thinking a big trade is immenient.

But I think this is just trying to bring the cap back into the positive and have in season spare change.

Can't imagine people being happy at pushing Dayo's contract!

[Field Yates @FieldYates]

The Bears have restructured the contracts of G Joe Thuney, DE Dayo Odeyingbo and LB TJ Edwards, creating ~$17M in 2026 salary cap space.

[Adam Schefter @AdamSchefter]

Bears RB D'Andre Swift, who left Thursday’s practice and was said to be in significant discomfort, was said to be experiencing “a cramp”, per sources.

[Dan Wiederer @danwiederer]

Update: Preliminary indications are that Bears WR Rome Odunze should be all good after leaving today’s practice. Bears breaking for the weekend tonight.

[Adam Hoge @AdamHoge]

Well, the good news is that Austin Booker was back at practice today and even did some team stuff.

The bad news is that Rome Odunze and D'Andre Swift didn't finish practice. Odunze seemed to be favoring his right foot and left after the walk-through period. Swift got banged up at the beginning of the long-drive period at the end of practice. Hobbled straight to the garage area and we didn't see him again. #Bears

[Devan Kaney @Devan_Kaney]

Rome Odunze and D’Andre Swift left practice early,

Odunze walked off with a trainer early on. Swift was grabbing his side and walked off towards the end of practice. @fox32sports

[Urso @buildingSBbears]

Awesome read

[Ryan Reynolds @RyanReynoldsNFL]

Chicago Bears Preview 2026

As an original inhabitant of Caleb Williams Island, I’ll start by telling you Chicago is a 10+ win team for the relative future, where Ben Johnson/ Williams/ Coleston Loveland/ Dennis Allen has a lot of parallels with Andy Reid/ Patrick Mahomes/ Travis Kelce/ Steve Spagnuolo.

Long way to go for that Chicago group to actually be that Kansas City cluster’s equal, but there are pretty obvious parallels.

Now for the bad news before the good and the details:

I didn’t like the Bears offseason
- Drew Dalman retiring was unexpected, and given the situation Chicago did a good job replacing him with a serviceable veteran in Garrett Bradbury paired with a second-round future at the position in Logan Jones. The Bears still have a top 10 OL, but that transition reduces the ceiling of what was a high-tier offensive line.
- I have always liked Kalif Raymond as a role player, and Zavion Thomas is interesting, but even though D.J. Moore wasn’t at his best last season, that’s still the loss of a good player and a ridiculous third or fourth option in a passing game.
- Tremaine Edmunds is an off ball linebacker with enough talent that he carries a game or two every year, that’s also maddeningly inconsistent given that talent. I’ve always liked Devin Bush, who hasn’t had as good of a career as I’d have expected, so while he also has a shot to be interesting, fair chance he’s a downgrade from Edmunds.
- Contending teams don’t draft safeties like Dillion Thieneman in the first round expecting them to be anything short of a top 5 player at their position. If he was able to be paired with Coby Bryant, maybe this offseason’s safety swap doesn’t end up being a big dip for Chicago. But as things stand right now, safety play could be noticeably worse early in the season unless Thieneman is a star right out of the gate.
- The Bears still need a pass rusher, and they just traded Gervon Dexter, who two years ago exceeded my expectations for long stretches.
- I don’t know what, exactly, is going on with Kyler Gordon, but if this defense is going to be an asset to this team, their cornerback group needs to be whole.

The Bears were also 7-3 in one-score regular season games last year, 8-4 including the playoffs. I am very much a regression to the mean guy, and at a baseline level those kinds of numbers in one score games usually regress a little.

One of the most valuable things I’ve learned from watching every NFL game for roughly a decade, is where regression comes from. It’s not some form of magic where a team wins a lot in close games and then just doesn’t the next year. Regression happens when something that drove those outcomes, was unsustainable.

Some of those Caleb Williams heroic moments late in games, probably aren’t going to happen in such decisive moments on a regular basis.

However, the ridiculous plays that won some of those games were not anything even resembling a fluke. Caleb Williams, similar to Aaron Rodgers, makes a few “wow” plays every game. Williams making a ridiculous throw, or evading an impossible situation, is normal for him. He literally does it every week, and even did a lot of it throughout his rookie season.

That throw in the Rams game, that one probably isn’t happening very often, in that kind of spot. But all the other ones? Normally I’d say that’s unsustainable, but that’s what this guy does.

If anything, the single biggest value add Caleb Williams brings to the Bears going forward is that if Chicago is down by 17 at the start of the fourth quarter, the Monsters of the Midway are far from drawing dead. That’s the new reality in Chicago.

The other is Williams has a very clear path to getting better: he needs to make 3 to 5 more throws a game. He was in a new offense last year, in his second season, after enduring what was a debacle in his rookie year. He also has a coach in Ben Johnson who is not only a charismatic, madman leader of men, but one of the league’s best offensive strategists.

I first noticed Johnson in a game against Buffalo, the year before Detroit’s full rise in 2022, on a Thanksgiving Day where Johnson’s run designs and play calling pushed the Bills to the limit. Detroit lost that game 28-25, but they went 5-1 through the rest of the season and were an offensive juggernaut the next two years with Johnson.

So, I don’t just mean Johnson is a good coach and an effective play caller, some of the little things he does, that I first noticed in that game against Buffalo in 2022. In his first year with the Bears, he said that he was happy the team had an early season bye, which is one of the most interesting things I ever saw a coach say, because that gave him the time to fully evaluate what was happening with his young team. The adjustments he made on the other side of that bye, were immediately apparent. I saw him set things up in October that he used in December. The gradual evolution of Coleston Loveland’s usage in that offense, him giving Kyle Monungai more run almost as soon as he started to show that he could be a factor.

Guys like this very rarely get a dynamic talent like Caleb Williams. Barring catastrophe, I’ll be surprised if it fails and I’ll be surprised if Williams’ accuracy doesn’t gradually improve.

I also want to mention something with Williams, he received a tremendous amount of flak after his rookie year because of what Jayden Daniels did. But 20-6 TD to Int ratio, with an 87.8 rating, despite having a borderline idiot for a head coach and atrocious offensive line play, it wasn’t a discouraging rookie year at all, at least not for me, I immediately thought Jared Goff’s trauma suffered under Jeff Fisher, except Caleb Williams is a dynamic talent and one of the best evaders, maybe the best, I’ve ever seen.

Yet despite all the negativity he got, he kept his mouth shut, despite all the detractors, despite all the stuff about his nails. But he seems like a guy that’s logging receipts for when the day comes that he wins an MVP and/ or a title, it wouldn’t surprise me if he started letting some of that stuff out in the most entertaining of ways when the time comes.

Now, I think the Bears will be a winning team this year, in a very tough division. The offense will look like an offense that is going to be in the top 5 every year going forward, where there will be moments where you can see the historic, lofty heights Johnson truly wants from that group. The defense… if the corner back group is healthy and the safety group plays well, I think this is the Rams year but I wouldn’t rule out an NFC Championship appearance for the Bears.

Next year, I think the front office goes out and gets a pass rusher while Williams is still on his rookie deal. I still think that’s likely Maxx Crosby, in part because of that first quarter he had against Chicago last year, where that was legit in the running for the best quarter I’ve ever seen a defensive linemen play before. No one in the Bears organization forgot about that, and he’s exactly what they need (assuming he’s still himself given injuries). Not only would getting an elite guy like Crosby improve that position, but it would improve Sweat as well, as he’d no longer be the focal point of offenses in obvious passing situations.

I think that happens, and that’s what turns Chicago into a juggernaut. I think the Bears finish the 2027 regular season with the league’s best offense, with a 15-2 type record, then get to the Super Bowl and win it.

And I don’t think that’s the only one they are going to win.

[Urso @buildingSBbears]

7/10 picks for the Bears.

Notice how the majority say the Bears will score 28+ points. And the margins are way over the spread.

Bears football nearly here

[Urso @buildingSBbears]

Top 3 offence 🫢❤️

[Around The NFL @AroundTheNFL]

Top 10 NFL offenses in 2026? (via @TheDan_Parr): Can Rams repeat?

https://t.co/XAyPFZibVC

[Henry McKenna @henrycmckenna]

4️⃣ Caleb Williams Will Top 4,500 Passing Yards And Bears Will Return To Playoffs.

It's tricky to project a young core's ascent. We are all prone to overestimate how much they'll develop.

But Ben Johnson is making me throw caution out of the window.

Here come Da Bears!

[Brad Biggs @BradBiggs]

#Bears released CB Jaylon Jones from IR after reaching an injury settlement with him. He suffered a hamstring injury in the preseason finale.