The Chicago Bears traded for All-Pro defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons in a blockbuster move Thursday, sending a package that included two first-round draft picks to the Tennessee Titans.
The deal sent shock waves across the league 12 days before the trade deadline, and it gave coach Ben Johnson’s Bears one of the best defensive linemen in the NFL.
Just how good is Simmons? Interior defensive line is one of the hardest positions to quantify. Edge rushers usually wind up with the big sack numbers, while tackles often get overlooked because their contributions are more subtle.
But here are some numbers that help quantify his impact.
How good is Jeffery Simmons?
For starters: four sacks, six tackles for a loss and one forced fumble in seven games this season. That comes after a career-high 11 sacks last year. He has had five or more sacks every season since 2021.
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Diving a little deeper, Simmons ranks first among NFL defensive tackles in pass-rush “win rate,” according to ESPN Analytics, by winning 27% of his matchups. Per ESPN’s Seth Walder, Simmons has faced double teams on 84% of his snaps when pass rushing from the interior.
The Bears will pair Simmons inside with Grady Jarrett, who ranks 18th among tackles in win rate at 16%. The Bears don’t have an edge rusher in ESPN’s top 20 in pass-rush win rate.
Per NFL Next Gen Stats, Simmons’ 28 quarterback pressures this season ranks first among tackles. He has faced 101 double teams, second-most among tackles. He has 21 run stops, tied for second at the position.
Simmons had a career-high 13.2% quarterback pressure rate last season, per NFL Pro, and he’s just shy of that number at 12% this year. He created five turnovers off pressures last year and has one this season.
Give him time and he will wreak havoc. His pressure rate when the quarterback takes longer than 2.5 seconds to throw the ball jumps to 19.1% this season.
Maybe most telling is his playing time. Simmons has played 86.6% of defensive snaps for the Titans, which is pretty much unheard of for modern defensive linemen. That’s a higher percentage than Myles Garrett played for the Cleveland Browns in 2025, when he set the NFL single-season sack record. It’s the type of playing time Aaron Donald saw in his prime.
It says a lot about how much Simmons means to a defense. It doesn’t matter if it’s a running or passing situation. He’s an asset in both.
Bears defensive coordinator Dennis Allen has had to work hard to manufacture QB pressures via the blitz. Allen is not traditionally a heavy blitzing coordinator, but the Bears rank fourth this season in blitz rate at 40.6%, per NFL Pro.
Through seven games, defensive linemen have accounted for 11½ of the Bears’ 19 sacks. A cornerback, Kyler Gordon, is tied for the team lead with four sacks.
Simmons’ presence should change the equation for the Bears defense. He’ll demand more double teams, which opens things up for edge rushers Montez Sweat and Austin Booker. Allen still will be creative with his blitz looks, but he shouldn’t have to rely on them to create pressure.
Why does it make sense for the Bears to go all-in now?
No doubt, giving up two first-round picks makes this one of the most expensive trades of the year. The Bears had plenty to weigh before making this deal.
First and foremost is their belief they can compete in 2026, 2027 and 2028 while quarterback Caleb Williams remains on his cost-controlled rookie contract. Williams will cost only $12.6 million against the salary cap in 2027, the fourth year of his rookie deal.
If the team picks up the fifth-year option for 2028, which at this point seems like a no-brainer, it would owe Williams just under $30 million in 2028 — and that number could jump to $43.8 million if he makes the Pro Bowl this season.
That’s still a bargain in a world in which top quarterbacks make north of $60 million per year. The Bears might sign Williams to a long-term deal beyond 2028, but if they do, they wouldn’t have the same salary-cap flexibility they have now.
From an economics standpoint, the time is now.
Even after restructuring his contract over the offseason, Patrick Mahomes’ $34.6 million cap hit this season eats up 11.5% of the Kansas City Chiefs’ cap space, whereas Williams’ $10.8 million cap hit accounts for just 3.2% for the Bears.
Poles worked in the Chiefs front office when they drafted Mahomes, and he helped build their first championship team of the Mahomes era in 2019. That year, Mahomes’ rookie contract ate up only 2.4% of their salary cap.
In both 2019 and 2021, the Chiefs traded away their first-round pick for help at defensive end and offensive tackle. They used their 2020 pick on running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire. Those moves indicated a “win now” mentality.
Yes, the Chiefs won two titles in the 2022 and 2023 seasons after Mahomes’ rookie contract was over, but they also have parted with key players — including wide receiver Tyreek Hill, guard Joe Thuney and cornerback Trent McDuffie — as it became more difficult to pay everybody.
If anybody understands the window in front of the Bears, it’s Poles.
What draft picks do the Bears still have?
Another piece to that equation is if the Bears believe they are contenders, they expect the draft picks they just traded to be late in the first round.
Most teams don’t expect a given draft to have more than a dozen or so blue-chip prospects. If you’re not in position to get one of them, you could argue your first-round pick isn’t as valuable.
Still, losing any top pick hurts. The Bears went without first-round picks in 2019, 2020 and 2022, and by the 2022 season the team had bottomed out at 3-14.
Then again, a franchise like the Los Angeles Rams can go seven straight years (2017-23) without a first-round pick and still find ways to be competitive. Trading your picks is not a death knell for an NFL roster, but it does mean you have to be a creative problem solver. It also puts more pressure on the front office to hit on those remaining picks.
Here’s a look at the draft picks the Bears have over the next two years:
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2027 (5 picks)
- 1st round: none
- 2nd: own
- 3rd: own
- 4th: none
- 5th: Falcons
- 6th: own
- 7th: own
2028 (7 picks)
- 1st: none
- 2nd: own
- 3rd: own
- 4th: own
- 5th: own, Titans
- 6th: own
- 7th: own
What’s the immediate impact?
ESPN Analytics bumped the Bears’ chances of winning the NFC to 13% on Thursday, second behind the San Francisco 49ers at 39%.
DraftKings lowered the Bears’ odds from +810 to win the NFC to +750. Their odds to win the Super Bowl went from +1400 to +1200.
The Athletic’s playoff simulator gives the Bears an 11% chance to earn the No. 1 seed and a bye in the wild-card round.