Daniel Jeremiah flips his first-round target position for the Bears to one other experts are predicting in his second mock draft
Add Daniel Jeremiah to the list of experts predicting an interior defensive lineman for the Bears.
We are in the heart of NFL mock draft season and during the first wave of expert mocks in the industry, the Chicago Bears had a pretty consistent theme for what position group the team is expected to target with the 25th overall pick in the first round.
Of the nine mock drafts sampled, a defensive lineman was selected by the Bears by eight different times including six different mocks featuring an interior defensive lineman.
The lone expert not going the defensive line route was NFL Network’s Daniel Jeremiah, who instead opted to go with Oregon safety Dillon Thieneman in the first-round. On Tuesday, Jeremiah released his mock draft 2.0 and decided to flip things up for the Bears and align himself with the other experts, but he still offered a different perspective.
Daniel Jeremiah has the Bears selecting Clemson DT Peter Woods in his second 2026 mock draft
Among the defensive linemen selected in the mock draft sample group I pulled, Ohio State defensive tackle Kayden McDonald was the easy favorite with four of the nine mocks listing him as the Bears target. The two other interior defenders were Florida’s Caleb Banks and Texas Tech’s Lee Hunter.
Jeremiah added a third interior defensive lineman to that group to watch out for as a first-round target for Chicago in Clemson’s Peter Woods.
“Teams seem to be all over the map on how they rank this year’s defensive tackles. Woods probably is the most explosive of the group and brings some juice on the interior,” Jeremiah wrote.
In Jeremiah’s mock, Woods was the first defensive tackle taken off the board with Hunter being the only other one selected in the Top-32 picks, and it goes to show how the industry ranking at the position is anyone’s guess at this point in the process. Regardless, Woods would be a fascinating target to consider after playing three seasons with the Tigers.
Our A to Z Sports scouting report on Woods highlighted his explosive first step and how strong he is against the run, although he has room to grow as a pass rusher. That makes sense considering he had just 5.0 total sacks in three seasons.
It’s hard to know exactly what the Bears are looking for to upgrade the interior of the defensive front alongside Gervon Dexter and Grady Jarrett. Both players offered sub-par performances as pass rushers, so part of me would rather have a more dominating interior player in that department.
Even still, Woods is the consensus DT1 in this class and having him available at 25 would be an easy decision for the Bears to bet on his traits and long-term development in Dennis Allen’s scheme.
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