The Chicago Bears entered the 2025 offseason with a desperate need to fix an offensive line that surrendered a staggering 68 sacks during the 2024 NFL season. For Caleb Williams to properly develop in the early stages of his NFL career, something like this can’t be allowed to happen again, and clearly, general manager Ryan Poles — a former offensive lineman himself — knew this. Before free agency even began, in the span of less than 24 hours, the Bears acquired Jonah Jackson and Joe Thuney, a pair of guards who will instantly shore up the interior of Chicago’s offensive line.
But why stop there? Ryan Poles could continue to invest in the trenches this spring and leave no doubt that in Ben Johnson’s first year as the head coach in Chicago, he’ll have not just a competent offensive line at his disposal, but ideally, one of the better units in the league. To ensure that the Bears make that leap, it may require that the team hands a big contract over to Drew Dalman, the top center on the market who ESPN’s Matt Bowen calls Chicago’s ‘best fit’ in free agency.
“Dalman wins his assignments with movement and leverage to offset a smaller frame (6-3, 300 pounds),” Bowen writes. “He’s a technician on tape, best suited for the zone run game, and his pass block win rate of 95.1% ranked ninth among centers with at least 500 snaps in 2024. (He missed time due to an ankle injury, though.) Chicago traded for guards Joe Thuney and Jonah Jackson, and Dalman could fit right between them on the line.”
Chicago’s interest in Dalman is not necessarily a new revelation. From the time the 2024 season ended, he’s been pegged as a potential free agency target of the Bears, and their prospective interest seemingly only grew larger after Ben Johnson spoke so passionately about the importance of a reliable top-tier center.
From a timeline perspective, it actually makes a lot of sense to invest in veteran offensive linemen right now. Why not spend a ton of money on the line while Caleb Williams is still cheap? It gives Ryan Poles and the Bears a multi-year runway to draft the eventual replacements for Thuney, Jackson and (fingers crossed) Dalman, and have each of those successors still on rookie deals when it’s time for the Bears to pony up the money to make Williams one of the highest-paid quarterbacks in the NFL.
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