The most consequential trade deadline move in the NFC was not made by a team in the San Francisco 49ers division, and it was not cheap. The Chicago Bears sent first-round picks in 2027 and 2028, plus a fourth-rounder, to the Tennessee Titans for defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons.
It was the first time a defensive tackle had been traded for multiple first-round picks. The price raised eyebrows across the league.
Two games into his Bears tenure, it's starting to look like Chicago knew exactly what it was buying.
Jeffery Simmons has already transformed Bears defense
Simmons announced himself in his debut at Seattle against the Seahawks, recording a sack, pressuring Sam Darnold, and drawing double-team coverage that freed up Montez Sweat on the edge. The All-Pro's presence has been felt in both games since the trade, and Sunday night showed the full value of it.
The Bears beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 27-24, moving them to 7-2, and first place in the division. And they did it on a night where the Bears offense consistently gave the ball away.
A defense that can absorb that kind of night from its own offense and still drag a team across the finish line is a defense built for January.
Rankings now point at a January collision between Bears, 49ers
That's where the Niners come in. Last week, NFL.com had the Bears at No. 3 on their weekly power rankings, a single slot behind the Niners at No. 2.
Now, with updated rankings, the Niners have shot up to No. 1, and the Bears dropped to No. 4, with the Buffalo Bills and the Jacksonville Jaguars taking slot Nos. 2 and 3 respectively.
The reasoning matters as much as the ranking. In his Bears entry, Nick Shook wrote that earlier versions of the Bears would have lost Sunday night's game, but the defense rose to the occasion.
That's the Simmons effect, and it points straight at San Francisco.
Simmons attacks from the interior, collapsing the pocket from the inside, and taking away the space a quarterback needs to step up and throw. The 49ers made their own defensive tackle move, bringing back DeForest Buckner, but Buckner arrived for a fourth-round pick on the last year of his contract. Chicago paid two firsts for a 29-year-old cornerstone who is under team control through 2030.
On top of that, the Bears and the 49ers are the top two NFC teams in the rankings.
The fear is not about one game this fall. It's that the Bears identified the one weakness on a contender, spent whatever it took to fix it, and fixed it for the foreseeable future. If the Bears and the Niners meet in January with a Super Bowl berth on the line, the most disruptive player on the field could be the one wearing navy and orange, in the middle of the line.
Add us as a preferred source on Google