The Chicago Bears’ blockbuster trade for Jeffery Simmons drew a lot of comparisons to their 2018 blockbuster trade for Khalil Mack. Both defenders were acquired to give a team with Super Bowl aspirations a boost, but the big difference is that this time the franchise knows exactly who they are with Ben Johnson and Caleb Williams, while the 2018 team was headed into year one of Matt Nagy and year two of Mitchell Trubisky.
There wasn’t proof of concept showing that Nagy/Mitch was the right pairing to
lead the franchise to a championship. It was just hope. They hoped Trubisky would take a year-two leap. They hoped Nagy was the right guy for the job. They hoped the new look offense would gel and complement Vic Fangio’s defense.
Whereas the Ben/Caleb pairing had a full year to cook, and part of 2026 to show improvement, which they did. This team was already firmly in the postseason mix thanks to the offense, so adding a game-wrecker to a well-coached Dennis Allen defense was a calculated gamble that made perfect sense.
The Bears have a head coach/quarterback combo who can lead them to greatness and be mentioned in the same breath as Walsh/Montana and Reid/Mahomes.
The nerds will try to use their spreadsheets to prove something about sustainability, regression, or some other dumb thing that can’t be measured. Analysts will point to history as to why this or that can’t happen. The haters will still try to poke holes no matter what their eyes tell them.
But this time it’s different, and they know it.
Check out our latest Bear & Balanced right here (or on YouTube), live today at 6:00 p.m. CT as we talk through the game.
Podcast version right here:
Here’s our usual bullet-point outline for Bear & Balanced.
- Intro: We’ll both share some general thoughts about the game.
- Trench Tribute: Our weekly pick for the best Bears lineman.
- Caught up in a numbers game: This segment features one number or statistic from the game that we found interesting.
- Sweet Tweets: We’re both active on social media (be sure you’re all following us at @gridironborn & @wiltfongjr), so we highlight one Twitter interaction/Tweet each week. We’re both also on Bluesky here and here.
- The Caleb Corner: We’ll talk about quarterback Tyson Bagent before we take our commercial break.
- The 3 Bears: You all know the story of the Three Bears, don’t you? In this porridge-themed portion of the show, we give our picks for the Bear that was hot, the Bear that was cold, and the Bear that was just right in the game against the Seahawks.
Our 2nd City Gridiron Podcast Channel is available on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, Audacy, and other popular podcast platforms, so hit subscribe wherever you get your audio. Our YouTube home is also called 2nd City Gridiron, so subscribe there for our pods and other video content.
