The new pieces are in place.
The Bears spent the past week revamping the interior of their offensive line. They traded for a four-time Super Bowl champion in Joe Thuney and a former Pro Bowler in Jonah Jackson to play the two guard spots. Then they signed Drew Dalman, who was widely considered the top center on the free-agent market.
General manager Ryan Poles and coach Ben Johnson addressed a major problem area in a big way. Now all they have to do is make it work.
Johnson isn’t shying away from what it will take.
“It shouldn’t be easy,” Johnson said. “This should be hard. Spring should be hard, training camp should be hard. Anything worth doing is hard, so it’s going to take a lot of work.”
The Bears introduced Dalman and new defensive end Dayo Odeyingbo at a news conference Thursday at Halas Hall in Lake Forest. Dalman likes that his new coach isn’t sugarcoating anything.
“It’s really exciting and it makes us feel like we’re going to approach everything head on and that it’s good to fail and it’s good to be aggressive and all those things,” Dalman, 26, said. “When you’re working at your fringe, that’s when you’re going to improve the most.”
Over four seasons with the Atlanta Falcons, Dalman blossomed into one of the league’s best centers. He was the icing on the cake after the Bears traded for Thuney and Jackson. Dalman signed a three-year, $42 million contract, the Bears’ first move when the free-agent negotiating window opened Monday.
For Poles, Dalman was a priority.
“He was definitely someone that was at the very, very top of our list, given how important (center) was going to be,” Poles said.
The Bears plan to play Thuney at left guard and Jackson at right guard, with Dalman sandwiched between them at center. Left tackle Braxton Jones and right tackle Darnell Wright return in 2025. Jones enters the final year of his contract, and it’s possible the Bears will bring in some competition for him in the draft.
Adding three new pieces and potentially a fourth to the starting lineup makes for a lot of moving parts. At the NFL scouting combine last month, Johnson spoke confidently about how flipping all three interior spots has been done before.
“There’s no question that you can change the dynamic of the room just like that,” Johnson said at the combine.
The Bears did it in the span of a week. Making it work will take longer than that.
Teams with new coaches can begin the offseason program early. Johnson and the Bears are allowed to get to work beginning April 7. This spring will be crucial for that revamped offensive line.
“We’re going to load these guys up, we’re going to see what they can handle, we’re going to fail, and that’s OK,” Johnson said. “That’s part of how you learn.”
From the moment he was hired, Johnson said he would not be bringing his playbook with him from the Detroit Lions. This is a new team with new players and new capabilities. The plan is to spend the spring building a new playbook that will play into the strengths of these players.
That applies to quarterback Caleb Williams, but it also applies to the offensive line.
“If we get really good at particular type of block, that’s what we’re going to feature,” Johnson said.
The good thing is that the three newest additions are veterans. Thuney has started 146 regular-season games, plus another 21 in the postseason. With four Super Bowl rings, he knows what it looks like when the offensive line is rolling.
He also knows how much work it takes to reach that point.
“You want to be a unit, see the game the same way, through the same set of eyes,” Thuney said. “I think it starts early. It starts in OTAs and getting in the film room together and seeing the film together, seeing how we see things. Then getting on the field and playing next to each other.”
In Detroit, Johnson’s offenses benefited from having one of the best offensive lines in football. The starting unit in 2024 featured four former first-round draft picks. The Lions began assembling that group when they drafted left tackle Taylor Decker with the 16th pick in 2016.
Efforts to build a successful offensive line could be measured in years, not weeks or months. As Johnson said, what the Bears are attempting won’t be easy.
Even so, the team feels pretty confident it took steps in the right direction.
“If you’re focusing on cohesion and execution and stuff like that, that means you feel awesome about the guys you have,” Dalman said.
