No one has been with the Bears longer than cornerback Jaylon Johnson.
That time may be coming to an end.
He planned it that way.
In May 2024, Johnson negotiated a four-year, $76 million deal that pays him $25 million — but with only a $9 million dead cap charge — in 2027. That makes him an attractive cut candidate after this season — and would allow him to reach free agency, where the market for cornerbacks has exploded over the past two-and-a-half years, just before his 28th birthday.
“I’m not a dummy,” Johnson said.
Johnson, then, is treating this year like the last one of his deal, even though it’s not.
“It’s definitely a contract year for me,” he said. “Whether that’s here, somewhere else, I’ve gotta put it on tape that I’m still a top guy in this league.”
That’s the most pressing issue. The Bears need Johnson to be reliable. Tyrique Stevenson, slated to start opposite him, has not been during his three-year career. Slot cornerback Kyler Gordon remains out with a calf injury after missing most of last season with the same malady.
Groin injuries limited Johnson to seven regular season games in 2025. When he returned for the stretch run after surgery, Johnson used numbing shots just to get through games. It wasn’t until the playoffs that he was able to play without being in pain.
It showed — Pro Football Focus graded him 68th out of 106 cornerbacks.
“I easily could have sat on my ass and not played and just watched it be what it was,” he said. “But for me I felt like what I had to give was enough to contribute to the team. Of course, it wasn’t nowhere near who I could be. I feel like people know that.”
Time to recover helped. So did a newfound love of Pilates.
“I needed a full offseason to get my legs back under me, to get some scar tissue and things like that out,” he said.
No player in the Bears’ locker room has been more open about his contract status over the years than Johnson. He got his current deal months after he asked for a trade on the eve of the 2023 NFL deadline. Poles said he’d move him for a first- or high second-round pick, but didn’t get offered either. Another extension was on his mind as far back as last offseason, when he told “The Rich Eisen Show” he might have to revisit his deal. He hurt his groin training in Las Vegas shortly thereafter. Now Johnson is talking about his next deal again.
Contract status can make a difficult game even more complicated. Three years ago, the Bears talked to Darnell Mooney about a new deal during training camp. They couldn’t reach an agreement. Mooney, playing out the last year of his contract, posted what remains, to this day, the worst season of his career. The pressure wore on him.
Johnson has dealt with it well. He finished 2023 — the year of his 24-hour-long trade request — as PFF’s highest-graded cornerback.
“No, there ain’t no pressure,” he said. “I am who I am and I do what I do regardless of the circumstance. I’m just happy to be healthy.”
It’s the first time, really, that coach Ben Johnson has seen him that way.
“He’s highly motivated to garner the respect that, certainly, I had for him when I came into the building — because he felt like last year was a disappointment,” he said. “So, he wants to get back to being on the upper echelon of cover corners in this league. You kind of see that approach.”
Johnson wants the rest of the league to see it, too.