Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - How do we feel about the Bears' moves in free agency so far? | Take The North

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

From 'Take The North' (subscribe here): Dan Wiederer and Mark Grote offer their feelings on how the Bears have maneuvered their roster early in free agency. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You've got two doors here. I'm showing them to you in here on the video frame. Do you want the door that has a little bit of Dan Reeder optimism for you? Or do you want the door that has a little bit of caution? You choose first. We'll get inside both doors either way. But which one do you want first? Dan, yesterday on the show, on Rahimi Harrison Grotie, after you got off the air with us,

and thanks for coming out with us. It was a great hit. I said, you know what the thing is about Dan Weeder? He, nobody does perspective and tells people, it gives caution, I think, better than Dan Weger. That's why I'm so well loved. Everyone loves my thought. So that said, give us the, you're a little bit worse. How did you characterize it?

The negative side. Just the caution and the warning. Yeah, give us the warning first and then lead up to the good stuff. All right. So we're talking about adding a linebacker in Devin Bush. Devin Bush is arriving in part because Tremaine Edmins was released. And I think if you talk to most people around the league, Tremaine Edmins is a much more accomplished linebacker at this stage of his career than

Devin Bush. So you've downgraded at linebacker. You had to do so necessarily because of salary cap constraints and things of that nature. Kobe Bryant arrives to a safety's room that is vacant right now. He's the only inhabitant in there, which makes him the headliner. If his arrival necessitates the departure of Kevin Byard, well, now you've subtracted an all-pro defender and a team captain from your locker room. And so one of the things that I felt Monday night was the Bears defense has changed,

but has it gotten better? The Bears team has changed, but has it gotten better? I would argue no. And I went and looked at it on Tuesday morning, the Bears had 47 players participate in the playoff game against the Rams in January. That's less than two months ago. 20 of those players, including nine guys who started that night against the Rams, are not currently on the Bears' 2020s roster.

So when Ben Johnson warned you that there was going to be changed with this football team, you're seeing it in real time now, that this is going to be a very different constructed football team by necessity. And so look, over the last, I guess it's seven days now, eight days now, you've subtracted a Pro Bowl Center from your roster. You've subtracted a five or six-time 1,000-yard receiver from your roster. You've subtracted a pretty good every year starter linebacker. And now potentially if Byard is gone, which we'll find out.

And again, things are fluid, fluid, fluid, fluid, fluid alert. You've lost a team captain in an all pro. And so, like, there's a lot of room to go. to get your team back just to the level that it was at just a week ago. And the Bears are going to have to continue to do that under constraints. The salary cap situation is not great at this moment. And then I'll give you, I'm going to open this door for you. This is the optimism door.

The NFL draft still exists, right? And when the DJ more trade was made, we said Bears fans feel good about the idea that they've got four picks in the top 90. And they're going to really have to go out and try to hit on those picks, at least three of them, to feel really good about what they're going to feel really good about what they can get done in this draft with adding difference makers to the roster. But this is just such a, to me, it's been a sobering reminder of how difficult it is to retain and sustain.

Retain and sustained. Yeah, the draft is April 23rd, just as a refresher for people listening because this has changed since in the last couple of months, the bears have a first round pick. They have two second round picks now because of the DJ Moore trade, a fourth round pick. They no longer have their fifth round pick. They do have a couple of seventh round picks as it stands right now. Shot clocks, big shots, upsets, ACEs, TGL playoffs are here. First, Atlanta Drive starts their repeat run against Los Angeles Golf Club, then.

Rory's Boston Common Golf and Tigers Jupiter Links face off in their playoff debuts. Who will advance? Keep up its playoffs. Tune in Tuesday, March 17th, at 6.30 p.m. and 9 p.m. only on ESPN and the ESPN app. The only thing I'll push back on a little bit, Dan, is the comp of Devin Bush and Tremaine Edmonds. That like Tremaine Edmonds, while you're right, probably a more accomplished career than Devin Bush, but not by a lot. And while Tremaine Edmonds was a good bear and a great leader and had a nice year last year, he was never a huge impact guy. And I will say, too, that there are similarities between the two careers.

of those of the linebackers, Devin Bush and Tremaine Emmons, because both I would say, like relative to where they were drafted and the expectations that both of these players had coming out of college and probably even more was expected of Devin Bush when he was drafted number 10 overall at Pittsburgh.

Neither has quite lived up to the billing that they were. So, while I don't want to call it a wash, I am not as concerned. And both, same age, both guys are 27. there's a similarity between the two.

I think that Devin Bush is properly motivated. He is coming off 125 tackle season where he did have a couple of pick six. So I don't know. I'm not as concerned at this point over the loss of Tremaine Ending because I like Devin Bush. And I don't think it's a huge difference in the actual impact that will be made on this football. Yeah, I'm not saying you need to be concerned. I think it's just an acknowledgement that they haven't made, they haven't upgraded the position. like they just haven't you know and so like that that if you're trying to go from a team that finished in the top eight to a team that can play in february you're trying to upgrade your roster and you're trying to get better and the bears haven't done that yet look like i think devon bush brings speed um you listened to ryan poise at the combine to combine and devon burs said that that was going to be a priority for the defense was to get faster he's going to make you a little bit faster you mentioned the bear's will be his fourth team what's crazy you mentioned that they're both 27 years old germane and devon bush like these guys been in the league forever and you're like man they entered

young and it's crazy that both those guys are still, you know, very much entrenched in their 20s. The 30-year-old doorbell is not ringing yet for either one of those guys. But look, like that was an outlier the season that Devin Bush had last year in Cleveland. That's not what he showed during his four years in Pittsburgh. It's not really what he was in his one year in Seattle or his first year in Cleveland. He benefits, obviously, from playing behind Miles Garrett with Carson Swessinger at his side and Denzel Ward behind him where you've got a defense that really was humming. And so you're going to have to find ways if you've Dennis Allen to turn him loose.

Your excitement about Kobe Bryant is warranted. I think there's a guy there that is very, very versatile, very quick. I think when he was shifted from cornerback to safety, his career kind of hit a little bit of an escalator, his ability to be aggressive, to tackle, to be tough, to show off some of his ball skills. Seven interceptions the last two years, that's a good piece of evidence of ball production. It's also the total that Kevin Byard had last year alone with the Bears. And so, like, again, like, I think you've put a good player into your defensive depth chart,

but you're also subtracting a bunch, you know? And so, like, when you go through that kind of list of guys that played in the playoff game that are no longer or not currently part of the Bears roster, you're like, whoa, no Jaquan Bristker, no Nashon Wright, C.J. Gardner Johnson, Tremaine Edmins. You know, there's a lot of pieces that you've subtracted. And now right now you're just filling those holes rather than going the next step and making significant upgrade. Yeah. And Kobe Bryant is interesting because of his versatility, which any defensive coordinator likes.

But we know in particular, just from gauging Dennis Allen on his first days with the Bears and the player that he that he pointed to was Kyler Gordon because Kyler Gordon has some versatility. And you can do all sorts of things with him. Kobe Bryant came into this league as a as a, as a, cornerback, played that position, kind of fiddled around in that position for a couple of years. Last year, played 17 games as the strong safety this past year, and he was a Super Bowl winner, that there is something to that that has to be added and mentioned often that Kobe Ryan won a damn Super Bowl, which is huge. And he can't keep everybody on a talented defense.

But he played 17 games at free safety this past year. So I love the versatility. He's the type of guy. I don't know if he's going to work out of how. great he'll be if he'll even be better than Jaquan brisker or or kevin byard or any of these guys but i do like the product and i like thinking about what dennis allen might be able to do with a guy like that with that type of versatility well the versatility that you bring up is huge and i i think that is something that that d a really values and and it gives you an opportunity to be unpredictable and

to do some different things both uh russian coverage wise that make things hard on an opposing offense. I like the Super Bowl experience as well, because if you are Kobe Bryant, you've seen it. You've seen it come to life, right? You've seen one of the best defenses in football, gel, understand what it takes to compete at the championship level, and you've watched a culture come together in a way where you're able to go have a parade in downtown Seattle. Those types of little bits of wisdom, I think, translate and they carry over with where you've come from. And I'm sure we'll hear from Kobe Bryant at House Hall before the end of this week, and we'll be able to pick his brain on kind of the value that he feels he gained from the experience of going on that journey with Seattle this year.

And so it's a plus. It's a plus for sure. You just, I mean, again, I'm going with the caution because this division, which is having its own turbulence across the NFC North this week as well. It's so hard. And you just have to realize that you're not the kings of the NFC North. You took the NFC North, but there's three feisty competitors coming to rip it back for. you. And so you just, again, like going back to Ben Johnson's mid-January sentiments of like, this is going to be really difficult to keep this thing going going forward. You just got to be

aware of that every single day. And that translates over to making roster moves practically sensibly and setting your football team up to sustain whatever success they enjoyed in 2025.