With roughly a week left before the trade deadline, the Chicago Bears are already being crowned the market’s biggest winners. On paper, it’s easy to see why. Jeffery Simmons proved to be the key factor in pulling off their biggest win of the year against the Seahawks.
“Our guys were excited the moment they heard the news that we were bringing him on, and he’s fit right in,” Bears coach Ben Johnson said, per ESPN’s Katherine Terrell. “We got a high-character locker room, and he is that himself. And you can feel his presence out there, whether it’s during the play or even after the play; you can feel him talking a little smack as well, which I think that elevates everybody around him. So I thought he played outstanding.”
“To come in there and have a share of the lead of tackles and a sack in his first game, his impact was profound.”
Titans Mike Borgonzi’s Trade Deadline Masterclass
Simmons didn’t need much time to go out there and play. He had been waiting for it the whole time he was with the Titans. In his first game for the Bears, Simmons recorded a sack, six tackles (three TFLs), and deflected a pass as Chicago registered its third straight win.
The numbers may suggest the Titans are potentially regretting the decision, but that’s far from the case. As massive as those numbers look for Simmons, he didn’t pull it off in the two years he was with the Titans.
Tennessee won just 4 of their last 28 games while he was playing at an All-Pro level. Sending him off to a contender where he gets a fresh start and a defense where he can actually shine, and getting the best draft capital there could be in return, was one of the finest trade deadline masterclasses this season that Mike Borgonzi put up.
Simmons was simply a symbolic high-priced veteran in a roster that was still stuck in rebuild mode. With the Bears, he gets a chance to move the needle right away.
Titans Got the Best of Both Worlds in Trade with Bears
Simmons is in the heart of his prime, but Tennessee, sitting at 1-6, is years away from actual contention. Keeping a $20M+ interior anchor on a team tearing down to the studs was simply sentimental vanity.
Every sack and QB hit Simmons stacks up for Chicago only proves one thing: Borgonzi extracted maximum value, and a historic one. The Titans knew they weren’t competing in 2026. Instead of letting a Pro Bowl pass-rusher rot through a teardown, Tennessee sold at the absolute peak of the market, turning a star into the structural foundation of their next era.
The Titans got a 2027 1st-rounder, a 2028 1st-rounder, and a 2027 4th-rounder from Chicago, giving back a 2028 5th alongside Simmons. It marks the first time in common draft-era history (since 1967) that an interior defensive lineman was traded for multiple first-round picks.
“I know that the quarterback was definitely uncomfortable and then there was a lot of disruption,” cornerback Jaylon Johnson said about Simmons. “You can just feel it on the back end [of the defense] of how disruptive he can be.”
Jeffery Simmons-Bears Trade Proves Titans’ Mike Borgonzi Just Won the Trade Deadline