The roster depth of the Chicago Bears gets called into serious question after the results of a hypothetical NFL expansion draft
The Chicago Bears are set to enter the 2025 season with a strong starting lineup on paper and an intense coaching staff ready to lead them into battle.Credit goes to head coach Ben Johnson and his partnership with general manager Ryan Poles for the roster overhaul that has taken place over the last few months.This […]
The Chicago Bears are set to enter the 2025 season with a strong starting lineup on paper and an intense coaching staff ready to lead them into battle.
Credit goes to head coach Ben Johnson and his partnership with general manager Ryan Poles for the roster overhaul that has taken place over the last few months.
This offseason was all about retooling the starting lineup with top quality players and the staff was able to do so bringing in players such as Joe Thuney, Grady Jarrett, Dayo Odeyingbo, Colston Loveland and Luther Burden III, etc.
Right now, this easily looks like the strongest roster this team has put together on paper since Poles was hired to be the general manager in 2022. But, the depth is still something to consider when looking at this team's outlook.
A mark of having strong roster depth during the offseason ultimately comes after training camp and the preseason when cuts are made. The strongest teams see a lot of their former players getting picked up by other teams after being released, a mark that the team had some strong depth and better options ahead of those players.
To get a better idea of how all 32 teams are looking this summer, and in a fun hypothetical setting, our own Wendell Ferreira recently put together a hypothetical NFL expansion draft. To do so, all 32 teams had to leave 12 players with 2+ accrued seasons unprotected.
0 Bears selected in Hypothetical NFL Expansion Draft
The full list of the players selected in the expansion draft was released Monday morning and the "new" team did not select any of the 12 unprotected players from Chicago. Here are the players that I left unprotected for the Bears.
Which means, the bottom of the roster players in Chicago weren't good enough to make it on the hypothetical roster. That should be concerning for the Bears when evaluating the current state of the roster as a whole.
While this is the strongest, deepest, roster Ryan Poles has constructed it still isn't viewed that highly compared to other teams in the league. This shows there's still some more work to be done in the future when it comes to the depth on this team.
And hopefully the lack of depth, as compared to the rest of the league, doesn't come back to bite the Bears in a negative way in 2025.
For full context, the Bears were one of seven teams to not have an unprotected player get drafted during the mock simulation.
Bears looking to push the versatility of underrated defender this summer to help create more competition at an open roster position
This could help him push for a roster spot.
