The Chicago Bears are clearly adept at tuning out external noise, but that hasn’t turned down the volume on pundits and fans criticizing the franchise for what appears a refusal to address its shortcomings in the pass rush.
Most recently, Seth Walder of ESPN panned the front office for ignoring what was the defense’s greatest deficiency in 2025 by a considerable margin. Walder detailed on Tuesday, June 30 that Chicago’s decision he has disliked the most during this offseason has been the choice not to add a veteran edge-rusher to an unproven and injury-plagued group.
“The Bears’ defense generated a ton of turnovers last season, but those takeaways helped disguise the fact that it was one of the worst defenses in the league on non-turnover plays,” Walder wrote. “The Bears are in a pretty tight cap situation, but it’s hard not to look at this team and think it could have used reinforcements on the edge.”
Bears Selected Leonard Floyd No. 9 Overall in 2016 NFL Draft
GettyFormer Chicago Bears defensive end Leonard Floyd.
Of course, the summer isn’t over and training camp has yet to begin. There remains time for the Bears to change their position on a pass rush that tallied 35 total sacks last season and was among the NFL’s worst in pass rush win rate and quick pressures.
Lester A. Wiltfong Jr. of Windy City Gridiron on June 19 authored a list of five free agent options for Chicago off the edge, including a reunion with Leonard Floyd — the No. 9 overall pick of the Bears in 2016.
“The former Bear will turn 34 this season, and while a bit on the small side (6’5″, 240), he’s always been able to set the edge in the run game,” Wiltfong wrote. “He played in 15 games last year for the Falcons (all starts) with 3.5 sacks.”
Leonard Floyd Has Been Consistently Above-Average Edge-Rusher Since Departing Chicago
GettyFormer San Francisco 49ers edge-rusher Leonard Floyd.
Floyd earned $10 million on a one-year contract in Atlanta in 2025 and carries a market value of $8.9 million in 2026, according to Spotrac. The Bears have just shy of $8.3 million in available salary cap space heading into July.
He has retained that value, at least in part, because last season was Floyd’s first dip in exceptional sack production across a six-season run over the second half of his 10-year career.
Floyd posted between 8.5-10.5 sacks per campaign across a five-year run between 2020-24, which began the year he departed Chicago for the Los Angeles Rams. The defensive end won a Super Bowl ring as a 17-game starter with the Rams during his second season with that franchise in 2021.
He also spent the 2023 campaign with the Buffalo Bills and played for the San Francisco 49ers two years ago, recording solid production at each stop.
Situational pass-rushers have a skill set that tends to age well in the league, as snap counts decline in later years while still remaining high enough across high-leverage downs to make their contributions exponentially more valuable than players at other positions.
Case in point, Floyd averaged well north of 900 defensive snaps between 2019-22 but scaled back to 577 snaps, 606 snaps and 461 snaps over the past three campaigns, respectively.
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