The Chicago Bears have officially found the final piece to retool the safety position after drafting Dillon Thieneman and the team's new safety duo gives Dennis Allen a huge advantage for how he schemes up the defense.
The Chicago Bears were absolutely thrilled to land Oregon safety Dillon Thieneman in the first-round of the 2026 NFL Draft, giving defensive coordinator Dennis Allen a new weapon to deploy at a position of need.
Given Thieneman's speed, character, and big-game ability, he fits all of the boxes the Bears were looking to address with the 25th overall pick.
Some fans and experts might be concerned about positional value drafting a safety in the first-round. However, the Bears view Thieneman as a do-it-all player and that ability gives Chicago's defense a huge advantage they didn't have during the 2025 season.
Speed was a major trait the Bears saw in Thieneman and that fits the theme looking at the defensive free agents Chicago acquired this offseason. Yet, it wasn't the only trait that sold the Bears on making this decision.
"You gotta look at versatility," Poles told reporters. "If it's a safety that's an old-school box safety that maybe doesn't have a lot of coverage, value stays down a little bit. That's why we felt comfortable taking Dillon where he was. There's versatility, so there's multiple positions he can play. . . And then when you have Kyler , you have Coby, you got guys that you can do a lot of different things to confuse the offense. That was on the checklist of a safety (being drafted first-round) and grading him where we had him graded."
Going back to the 2025 season, the Bears had major issues with the defensive speed. Looking closer at the safety position, Chicago also had versatility issues with Kevin Byard III and Jaquan Brisker . For context, Byard played 907 of his 1,220 defensive snaps at free safety while Brisker played 508 snaps at free safety and 421 snaps in the box.
Allen simply wasn't able to play those two interchangeably like he can with Thieneman and Coby Bryant. For comparison, Thieneman and Coby Bryant have experience playing both free safety and in the box. You can line both players up horizontally pre-snap and then roll them around the field after the snap.
"Depending on who we're going against, he can do different things," Poles explained. "It probably makes things look the same but do different things out of it. Which, as an offense, is difficult to prepare for."
The downside to drafting Thieneman is that Chicago, once again, overlooked the need on the defensive front. At the same time, the pass rush and pass coverage go hand-in-hand with each other. And, according to head coach Ben Johnson, the team's coverage in 2025 was more of a concern watching back the tape compared to the pass rush.
"I think, when you watch the clips over the course of the season, we certainly want to be tighter in our coverage," Johnson explained on the Bears, Etc. Podcast . "Particularly our man-coverage. It was just an area where, when you looked at it, we didn't feel like we gave our pass rush a chance to get there."
By adding Thieneman and giving Allen two safeties to disguise the coverage, along with another chess piece in Kyler Gordon , the Bears can cause quarterbacks to hesitate which allows more time for the pass rush to hit home.
"In this situation, we have good corners and good safeties," Poles added. "We can be in a position to where we can make the quarterback hold onto the football a little bit longer."
Having Thieneman, Bryant, and Gordon will be a huge advantage for Allen when it comes to scheming up coverages and even dialing up blitz packages on a down-to-down basis that he simply didn't have the horses for in 2025 .
