With camp opening this week, we’re breaking down every position group on the Chicago Bears.
Safety seems copy and paste for the Chicago Bears for who will make their 2025 53-man roster. Unless there’s an injury, this group should be the same one we saw open the season last year.
Roster Locks
Strarters Kevin Byard III and Jaquan Brisker, and reserves Elijah Hicks and Jonathan Owens, opened up the 2024 season, and they all returned to do it again. Even with Dennis Allen’s new defensive scheme in place, the Bears didn’t make any significant offseason moves at the position.
Brisker revealed earlier this year that he was nearly drafted by the Saints and then head coach Allen had the Bears noy picked him at 48 overall.
“When we were in the draft, Dennis Allen and I met at the combine, and they told me at 49 they were going to take me,” Brisker said via Casino Beats. They were going to pick me, and I was like one pick away. So there was that connection always there. They had signed Tyrann [Mathieu], so I was going to come in to play next to him.”
Brisker seemed poised for a break out last year, but he only played in five games. He’s excited to play and show his versatility to the creative Allen.
“[To] show I’m a Swiss Army knife,” Brisker said last month via ESPN, “how he moves pieces around, and how we run so many different things, and we can all make it look the same or vice versa. Things like that. That’s what I love about it. DA is smart. I know he’s going to put us in the right positions.”
Even at a soon to be 32, Byard is still playing solid football, and Owens is an experienced reserve and special teamer.
The Bears have received good value from former seventh-rounder Hicks. In his three years, he’s played in 44 games with 15 starts, and has amassed over 600 snaps on the third phase.
Not one of these players is signed beyond this year, but that’s a 2026 problem.
A Good Bet to Make it
Move along, nothing to see here…
On the Bubble
Veteran Alex Cook was released and brought back in a span of two days last week, and I can see him making Chicago’s 16-man practice squad. Most of his career has been spent on practice squads, but the 26-year-old did appear in 10 games, with two starts, in 2023 for the Panthers.
Undrafted free agents Major Burns and Tysheem Johnson were the first rookie safeties acquired for the new coaching regime, so odds are good that at least one of them sticks around on the practice squad.