Kings in the North: Bears won the NFL trade deadline — and their bye week

The Chicago Bears won’t play a meaningful snap of football this week and won the week anyway.

That's what a trade deadline is supposed to do for a team that's actually going somewhere. The Bears are 7-2, alone in first place in the NFC North and they spent their bye week watching the rest of the league grade the move they made two weeks ago … and watching a desperate team come calling for their backup quarterback and leave empty-handed.

Landing Jeffery Simmons was a difference-maker for Bears

Let’s start with the Bears’ big move itself. Two weeks before the deadline, general manager Ryan Poles traded two first-round picks and a fourth-rounder to the Tennessee Titans for Jeffery Simmons, a three-time All-Pro defensive tackle, and got a 2028 fifth-rounder back.

It was a big swing, and the graders mostly loved it. USA Today gave the deal an A-minus, and CBS Sports matched that grade. The dissenters were real (ESPN handed out a C, The Athletic a D-plus), but the dissent was about the price, not the player. Nobody doubts Simmons can play.

He has spent two games in Chicago proving it. The Bears are 2-0 with him in the lineup, and in those two games, Simmons has 10 tackles, three tackles for loss, two sacks, two quarterback hits and two pass deflections. He has six sacks on the season after a career-high 11 last year. He turns 30 in January and he's signed through 2030.

The cost was steep. The player is worth it. That's the whole argument, and the first two weeks settled it.

However, the deadline win wasn't just Simmons. It was what the Bears didn't do.

Bears spurning Ravens helped win NFL trade deadline

Baltimore lost quarterback Lamar Jackson to thumb surgery for at least six to 10 weeks and lost backup Tyler Huntley for the season in the same game. The Ravens needed a quarterback, and reports circulated they initiated discussions with Chicago about Tyson Bagent. There was even a connection: Ravens offensive coordinator Declan Doyle worked with Bagent in Chicago last season. He knows exactly who and what the quarterback is.

The Bears kept their price high enough that Baltimore went another way, finalizing a trade for Jacoby Brissett from the Arizona Cardinals on Nov. 6 and handing him the start for Monday night against the Los Angeles Chargers.

That's the right call, despite some of Bagent's struggles this season. Bagent is one snap away from starting for a first-place team in the middle of a division race, behind a quarterback who just threw four interceptions in a 27-24 win over Tampa Bay. Caleb Williams is the future and the present, but the present can wobble quickly with an injury. You do not trade your insurance policy in November when you're 7-2.

Poles, however, didn't fix everything. The secondary was the clear weakness after the Simmons trade, and he didn't add a cornerback or an edge-rusher at the deadline. If Jaylon Johnson or Tyrique Stevenson gets caught in a big moment in January, that's the bill coming due. That's a fair criticism, and it's the one thing keeping this from a perfect deadline.

But step back and look at the standings. The Bears are 7-2 while the Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings are 6-2 and the Green Bay Packers 6-3. The whole division is a fistfight. Chicago comes back from the bye on Nov. 22 against the New Orleans Saints with its best defensive player in a decade already in the building, its backup quarterback still on the roster and first place still in its hands.

Deadlines are when contenders act like contenders. The Bears did, and they did it while everybody else was playing and they were home watching.