The Bears have made a move to come up 26 spots to the back of the sixth round. They are sending pick Nos. 239 and 241 in the seventh round to the Bills to move up for Georgia Tech defensive tackle Jordan van den Berg. Van den Berg makes history today as the first ever South African-born player to be selected in the NFL Draft.
Chicago has had a versatile draft up to this point, addressing a different position group with each selection. With this trade up, the Bears have added depth on their defensive interior with a decent amount of potential. It’s been a long road for van den Berg, who began his path to the NFL through community college before landing in Happy Valley. After three years in rotation role on the defensive line at Penn State, van den Berg transferred to the Yellow Jackets for a starting opportunity.
Starting his time at Georgia Tech coming off the bench, van den Berg quickly outperformed his bench role and worked his way into the starting lineup by Week 6. In that first year in Atlanta, van den Berg started to show a knack for disruption with a sack and five tackles for loss. Given the opportunity to play as a full-time starter in 2025, he expanded that production, recording career highs in total tackles (44), sacks (3.0), and tackles for loss (11.0). He comes to the league with an NFL-ready frame but will need to work through some stiffness to be effective at the next level.
The Bears return Gervon Dexter and Grady Jarrett as likely starters on the interior defensive line and signed Neville Gallimore, Kentavius Street, and James Lynch in free agency to join last year’s second-round pick Shemar Turner and fill out the room. That’s a lot of bodies for van den Berg to move past on the depth chart, making it a difficult road to a spot on the 53-man roster. There may be a plan in place for van den Berg to end up on the practice squad to start his career, where he will be able to qualify for the NFL’s International Player Pathway Program and not count against the taxi squad’s 16-man limit.
How many reaches can you have in one draft my god
They were done for the day and they didn’t wait for the 7th round to finish to start tossing some back.
Bears have even signed an UDFA QB. Miller Moss from Louisville. Bear down!
Let’s get real here. This is like a free guy on the roster. He’s from South Africa so he can stay on the roster and be used as a foreign exception and still have an extra body around. It’s just that simple. And pretty smart really.
I liked this draft. It filled a lot of needs while not reaching or using assets. They got a lot of things they needed. A starting Safety, A B/U and future starting C, A cheap replacement for Kmet(For whenever), A replacement for JJ (Whenever), A solid LB, A KR so Burden and Raymond don’t have to do it all the time, A DL who doesn’t actually count as a spot on the roster, And a huge improvement in team defense speed. I don’t know what you expected. Poles and Johnson made it clear they don’t agree with all your perceptions about the DL, They like it. They helped it the best way they could. By bringing in a bunch of guys who can cover. Trading up is most always fools gold. FA is a better option than Draft reaches IMO.
I don’t think the “experts” would give the Bears draft an initial grade higher than C. Of course it will be a few more seasons before the real verdict comes in. Well see if the coaches can up their game now.
Well the so called expert for CBS gave them a D for picking Jones who I said I liked more than Hecht and was surprised when they took him and said he couldn’t pass block when everyone else I heard said he was good at it. So what “Experts” are those? It all depends on what you think is an expert I guess. We’ll find out in August. Everyone else they took was a good value.So I don’t really care. Plus there are 2 more times to add guys being June 1 and Final cut down day, Not to mention UDFA coming up.
Don’t have any perceptions about the DL, have the reality. It wasn’t very good and they didn’t do anything to address it. LB core either. A third TE and another WR was buffoonery. They’re hoping the DL will improve on its own. We will see.
I don’t get why everybody is gaga in April. There’s still over 3 months until we start playing PRE SEASON games for crying out loud. There are guys other teams want to trade. There are guys the Bears probably want to trade. Give it a rest. So things didn’t fall according to plan for Dline. last year it was the RB’s that fell wrong.It all seemed to work out in the end. A couple of trades add a little Cap space and it’ll work out in the end.Get a grip. For once I can say I have complete faith in the people who are running this team. Wow
You have complete faith in the people considering a move to Indiana? Wow!…I wasn’t expecting to hear that…lol.
Well everyone is knocking the draft but I liked what I saw. As far as Indiana I hope that was just posturing to get the politicians in this State to see reality and from what I’m hearing it’s working. As far as the D Line goes the kid they drafted in the 6th looks like he has a shot. They signed the best UDFA DL right away as well as the best IOL UDFA so they addressed depth. I still say the Patriots ruined the plan when they jumped in front of the Bears and drafted Jacas who I really wanted. But every draft has some bad things happen and they are in position depth wise to make some trades and maybe even deal Gordon or JJ if they wanted to go for big cap money. They didn’t force it with RB last year and didn’t force it with DL this year and still came away with a couple of intriguing guys. They were showing the DL UDFA as a good fit since round 4 so not sure why he fell but I heard he’s a tad short but is a solid run guy so maybe he replaces Billings at some point who knows? I’m willing to wait and see. I saw some tape of Gallimore finally and he and Van den Berk look like they might be good. Just because they didn’t get a big ticket doesn’t mean they didn’t get better. They’re definitely deeper. Ben Johnson has no connection to JJ so he won without him last year so might be willing to dump most of his 25 million dollar salary. I say he’ll definitely be gone next year if he gets hurt or stinks this year. I thought they did just fine.
I’ll have complete faith when they can take a lead and hold it. When they don’t need TOs, or miracle plays to stay in games. I have faith in Johnson identifying offensive talent. I have zero faith in Poles ability to evaluate players. He’s been off track way more than on track.
How can you say that? Poles has way more hits than misses but he’s been drafting at the top of the draft and now he’s at the bottom. Most if his supposed misses have been due to injury. There are a lot of questions I still want answered and nobody is talking.
1. What is the deal with Zah Frazier? I keep hearing how good he is but he’s never even put on a uniform. What’s his deal?
2. To be players on 6/1 and Final Cut down day they need cap space. How are they going to get it? If an Edge gets cut how could they sign him? I don’t want them to renegotiate a ton of money. They already cut down next years money they could have had by 11 million unless they do it again.
3. They could still help by moving people they don’t need. How about a Kyler Gordon for Thibodeaux deal for an EDGE guy? If you can’t draft them trade for them. The back 7 is now fast and deep so there will be extra pieces.
4. Gallimore looks pretty good to me. Is he DT 1 with Dexter and Jarrett as filler until he can be cut next year? Could they find a taker for him(Jarrett)? They might have to eat some of it but some of it is better than all of it.
5. Nobody is talking about what the plan is. At least they saved enough to sign the draft picks. What’s next? Inquiring minds want to know. Still 3 months to get it together. I think the final roster is a lot different. But how?
Shouldn’t worry about it yet.
More hits than misses? Poles doesn’t have many hits at all.
Wasted acquisitions: Nate Davis, Chase Claypool, Dan Feeney, N’Keal Harry, Chris Williams, Ryan Bates, Darrell Taylor, Jonah Jackson. And Poles being a former OL, you’d think he can evaluate OLs! He can’t.
Then there’s trading All-Pro Roquan Smith to save a whopping $2M a year.
Poles had over 25 draft picks in 2022-24. How many panned out? 5? First rounders like Darnell Wright/Caleb Williams/Rome Odunze were picks any fan on their couch could’ve made. So Pokes has been awful drafting.
Now 2025/26 I believe 100% that was Johnson telling Poles who to draft. Now we have much better players.
Then my all time favorite: Poles glossing that Eberflus “captained the ship” during all the storms while Jim Harbaugh and Sean Payton were available! You have to admit how embarrassing that is.
The only great move Poles made was getting the picks for 2023 #1 overall. And he was lucky Lovie won the final game of the 2022 Texans season, giving the Bears the #1 pick.
Poles said the DL will improve on its own. Maybe it does, but I don’t really believe him. It’s the obvious problem on the team and hasn’t been addressed through FAs or now the draft. They drafted 1 player that will help the 2026 roster. One!
I’m not worried. The plan is to play football. And hopefully not go down early in games and pray for miracle comebacks again. Hopefully they can control games and blow teams out. But if you can’t pressure the other teams QB that isn’t easy. Hopefully they don’t call 30 yard pass plays on 2nd and 8 from midfield in an OT playoff game . Just DUMB
I can do that too. DJ Moore, Thuney, Dahlman, Wright squared, Burden, Odunze, Gordon, Sweat and I can keep going but how do you list Jonah Jackson as a loss? He started every game and played excellent football on what became the best line in football? And not everyone can hit on early draft picks because Ryan Pace was the absolute worst at it. Roquan Smith basically pouted his way out of town and got his wish so don’t see how that’s Poles fault. I’ve said it many times that the Bears saddled Poles with Eberlose by giving him 3 guys to pick from and wouldn’t let him pick his own guy. One can only imagine how bad the other 2 were that he was the ” Winner”. Poles was saddled with almost 100 million dollars in dead money and no first round draft pick when he took the job and got them out of it. So for every ” Bad move” You gave I can think of more good ones hence what I said. Last time I checked Poles had no role in play calling so how is that his fault exactly? LMAO
You’re right about Jonah, my bad. But not giving credit to Poles for any pickups after Johnson was hired. Nope. I don’t see any reason to think Poles has a clue about player evaluation after all the bad moves he made. Thuney, DJ, Sweat, Darnell Wright? Obvious good players. Bozo the clown could’ve made those moves. Bottom line is Poles drafts before Johnson were bad. This draft? They got one player to help the 2026 roster. One.
Roquan wanted top money and he deserved it. He played the game when he got drafted. The defense clearly suffered after he left. And for what? $2M? Look at the LBs today, not looking good. Maybe you have faith in Poles, but I don’t. When Caleb is extension ready let’s hope this roster isn’t a mess.
And no Poles doesn’t coach the team but he is technically Johnson’s boss. No more dumb plays.