The Bears paid two firsts for Jeffery Simmons, and the bill comes due in Ben Johnson's playbook

Everyone has graded the Jeffery Simmons trade as a win-now statement. Fine. A statement costs nothing. This one cost Chicago a 2027 first-round pick, a 2028 first-round pick and a fourth-round pick, and the only way to defend that price is to believe Ben Johnson and Caleb Williams turn a good team into a great one.

What the Bears bought

Simmons is 29 and just signed a three-year, $105.8M extension with $100M guaranteed, at $35.27M a year. That made him the highest-paid defensive tackle in NFL history, and Chicago inherits all of it. The Bears get him and a 2028 fifth-round pick back. No player comes with him.

The production is real. Simmons has four sacks in seven games and 28 pressures, the most among defensive tackles by Next Gen Stats. Nobody is calling him a bad player. The question is what a Bears defense that already ranks near the top ten in points allowed, at 20.4 a game, does with him.

Against the run, the answer is not much. Chicago allows 87.6 rushing yards a game, third in the league. The hole is elsewhere, and a tackle who eats blocks in the middle does not obviously fix a unit that has struggled to stop opponents on the way down the field. That is a scheme and play-calling problem, and Johnson's staff has to prove it can put a $35.27M interior rusher in positions to wreck drop-backs rather than simply occupy two blockers.

The Dallas comparison

Compare the market. Dallas got two firsts for Micah Parsons, but Green Bay sent back Kenny Clark, a starting tackle. Dallas then paid the Jets a first, a second and Mazi Smith for Quinnen Williams. Chicago sends two firsts and a fourth, takes back a fifth and receives no one else. Whatever the exact exchange rate, the Bears paid at the top of the range for a player who is not the best at his position and is on the wrong side of 29.

The guarantees tighten the screw. Chicago owes Simmons $26.9M fully guaranteed in 2027, so the exit ramp is gone before the team knows whether the 2026 bet worked. Draft picks in 2027 and 2028 are the cheap roster fillers a contender leans on while a quarterback is still paid like a young one. Chicago just spent both.

The part Williams controls

The offense is why this can work. Chicago is 5-2 and scores 25.7 points a game. Williams has played four games, completing 71% of his passes at 8.2 yards per attempt, and he has absorbed 39 pressures in that time. If that line holds and Johnson keeps designing answers to pressure, the Bears have a quarterback worth building a defense around, and Simmons looks like a sensible final piece.

If it does not, Chicago has an expensive tackle, no first-round picks in two drafts and a defense that still gives up chunk plays. The Seahawks on Monday night are the first test. The real test runs through January and the next two springs, and it sits with the offensive play-caller and his quarterback, not with the man Chicago just bought.