The Chicago Bears are trading two first-round picks for Jeffery Simmons. Tennessee is sending its All-Pro defensive tackle to Chicago, a deal first reported by The Ringer’s Tom Pelissero on Thursday, Oct. 29.
The Titans get the Bears’ 2027 and 2028 first-round picks plus a 2027 fourth-rounder. Chicago gets Simmons and a 2028 fifth-round pick, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter. Neither team had announced the deal as of late Thursday morning.
What Chicago is getting
Simmons, 29, has spent his whole career in Tennessee since the Titans took him 19th overall in 2019. He’s coming off a career-high 11 sacks in 15 games last season. Through seven games this year he has four sacks and 38 tackles, a little behind that pace but still the kind of interior push most teams can’t find.
He lands on a 5-2 team that won the NFC North last season under Ben Johnson. The Bears also just got Montez Sweat back from a two-game suspension, so Chicago’s defensive front gets two reinforcements in the same week. Simmons will likely make his Bears debut Monday against Seattle.
Tennessee’s side of it
The Titans are 1-6 in Robert Saleh’s first season as head coach. Losing Simmons makes the rest of this season harder, but two first-round picks in the next two drafts give the new staff real ammunition for a rebuild. The NFL trade deadline is Nov. 10, so Tennessee has nearly two weeks to decide whether more veterans follow Simmons out the door.
Why it matters
McGraw Media’s read: this is Chicago going all in, and the timing makes sense. The Bears are already 5-2 with a division title to defend, and two future firsts are a fair price for a lineman who just posted a double-digit sack season. The risk is on the back end. If Chicago doesn’t turn this into a deep playoff run, giving up two future firsts will sting for years, because those are the cheap, young contracts that keep a contender stocked. For Tennessee, it’s the rare deadline sale that actually returns premium picks, and that matters more to a 1-6 team than one more good Sunday.
This story was drafted with AI assistance and fact-checked by McGraw Media.
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