The Chicago Bears revamped their defensive line ahead of the 2026 NFL season. Find out how the coaching staff is feeling about the unit.
The Chicago Bears' defensive line room finished as one of the team's weakest units last season.
More often than not, offenses found success running the football, and quarterbacks had time to dissect Chicago's secondary. The Bears recognized change was necessary, so general manager Ryan Poles added talent to the interior.
Free agency brought Neville Gallimore, Kentavius Street and James Lynch. Chicago selected Georgia Tech's Jordan van den Berg in the sixth round and signed undrafted free agent Jayden Loving from Wake Forest after the draft.
All those players are on the Bears' 53-man roster, giving defensive coordinator Dennis Allen plenty of options on the interior. The team traded Gervon Dexter Sr. to the Atlanta Falcons in exchange for a firth-round pick and cornerback Clark Phillips III.
Allen mentioned that the group of defensive tackles were all capable of making the roster, "yet I think there's a couple of young guys that we feel really good about trying to develop that I think could be the future of what we’re trying to do inside."
Despite a former second-round pick in Dexter exiting, Allen likes what he has in the D-line room.
"I feel really confident with who we have on the defensive line," Allen said. "I think the style that we want to play, I think we’ve got guys that can do the things that we want to do. I felt like all along that was probably our deepest position group. I felt like we had a lot of guys that were NFL caliber football players, and you can’t keep all of them. But we feel good about where we’re at."
Less than a week ago, Bears head coach Ben Johnson called the interior defensive line the most underrated position group on the team. Someone that hasn't been talked about much this summer but has made a strong impression on Allen is Street.
"Quite honestly, I think he was the most-productive tackle we had throughout the course of training camp," Allen said. "He's got the suddenness and the explosiveness off the ball that we're looking for to create penetration and disrupt the line of scrimmage. He's really taken to the things that Jeremy (Garrett), Bill (Johnson), Zach (Cable), all those guys are coaching and how we want to play that position."
Of course, there's van den Berg. Allen acknowledged that the rookie has to work on coming up with a finishing move in the run and pass game, but his physicality and effort is there.
Allen admitted the pass rush is still a work in progress, but there has been improvement. While Chicago, a most of the NFL, doesn't have elite game-changers like Myles Garrett, Allen pointed out that there are ways to still affect the quarterback.
3.1 seconds. That's the ideal time Allen believes it takes for a pass rush to hit home. Until then, the cover has to force the quarterback into a second or third read.
"Sacks, hurries and hits need to come when the quarterback has to reset, and that typically is going to be 3 to 3.2 seconds," Allen said. "I felt like when the quarterback had to go to a second or third read, I felt like more consistently we were able to to affect him."
The Bears feel confident in their defensive line room, a unit that created more questions than answers last season. But this group has an opportunity to shift the narrative in Week 1 when they open the season against the Carolina Panthers on Sept. 13.
