Espn’s Offseason Report Card Loves The Bears Dj Moore Trade, Side-eyes The Edge

ESPN’s Seth Walder dropped his offseason report cards for all 32 teams today, and the Bears came out of it in pretty good shape. Walder gave the Bears a B+ for Ryan Poles’ second go-around in the Ben Johnson era.

That ties them with the Packers atop the NFC North, a notch ahead of the Lions (B) and the Vikings (B-). Not bad company for a team that, a year ago, most of us were still grading on a “please just don’t embarrass yourselves” curve.

But before anyone gets too comfortable, Walder lands on the exact concern that’s been nagging at this fan base all spring. More on that in a second.

First, the part he loved: the DJ Moore trade.

The DJ Moore Trade Was the Masterstroke

Walder’s favorite Bears move of the offseason was shipping Moore to Buffalo, and honestly, it’s hard to argue with his reasoning. On the surface, getting a second-round pick (and sending a fifth back) for a receiver who once posted a 1,300-yard season doesn’t scream highway robbery. But context is everything here.

Moore was coming off an underwhelming season, and the extension he signed before 2024 was just starting to balloon into real money. Walder’s point (and it’s a good one) is that the Bears somehow convinced the Bills to surrender actual draft capital just to take that salary off Chicago’s books. The Bears cleared roughly $16.5 million in cap space, ate a manageable chunk of dead money, and then turned that No. 60 pick into more draft ammunition, eventually landing Stanford tight end Sam Roush. Getting paid to solve your own problem is good business.

He also gave a nod to how the Bears navigated the Drew Dalman curveball. Dalman’s retirement at 27 in early March was a genuine gut-punch to an offensive line they’d just spent serious resources rebuilding. Rather than panic in a thin center market, Poles moved fast, trading for Garrett Bradbury to set a floor and drafting Logan Jones in the second round as the longer-term answer. It wasn’t flashy, but it kept the line from becoming a crisis.

The Turnover Mirage on Defense

And then there’s the defense, which is where Walder gets to the heart of it. He makes a sharp observation that’s worth sitting with: the Bears generated a mountain of takeaways last season, and those turnovers papered over the fact that, on every other down, this was one of the worst defenses in football.

Turnovers are great when they happen, but they’re notoriously fluky and tough to repeat year over year. Walder actually credits the Bears for not deluding themselves into thinking they could just run that turnover magic back. The secondary got a real makeover; out went Kevin Byard, Jaquan Brisker, and Nahshon Wright; in came Coby Bryant in free agency and Dillon Thieneman in the first round.

But here’s the move Walder didn’t like, and it’s the one everyone has been hammering for months: they didn’t add at edge. He acknowledges the cap situation is tight, but he can’t quite squint his way past a roster that still looks light up front. This is a team that’s poured nearly everything into Caleb Williams and the offense (which is the right priority), but the defense remains a legitimate question mark heading into the season, and the pass rush is the loudest part of that question.

Is a B+ Fair?

So, a B+. That feels about right to me. This was a smart, disciplined offseason that maximized value (the Moore trade), avoided disaster (the Dalman scramble), and honestly reckoned with a defense that was worse than its splashy turnover numbers suggested. It just didn’t fully solve the one problem everyone could see coming. Whether that omission ages into a footnote or a regret depends entirely on whether that pass rush can get home in 2026.

You can read Walder’s full breakdown of all 32 teams (including where the rest of the NFC North landed) over at ESPN.